Who are you becoming here?

She called me after years.

We spoke about ordinary things first.

Work. Kids. Life.

Then her voice softened, like she was asking permission to say what she already knew.

“I don’t know if I can leave,” she said.

“But I keep telling myself… one day it will be okay.”

Not hopeful.

Not convinced.

Just hanging there.

In that one sentence, I could hear the push and pull.

The wanting to be free.

The fear of being judged.

The fear of being alone.

The fear of being wrong.

And beneath it, a quieter fear no one names.

What if waiting doesn’t save me?

What if it changes me?

What if, by the time things are “okay,”

I am no longer soft?

No longer generous?

No longer capable of loving without keeping score?

Because waiting doesn’t keep you safe.

It just teaches you how to live with less —

less joy, less softness, less of yourself —

until you forget you ever wanted more.

People talk a lot about courage.

About leaving.

About choosing yourself.

But no one talks about the slow erosion that happens when you stay stuck too long.

How hope, stretched beyond its capacity, turns into bitterness.

How numbness starts feeling like strength.

How survival quietly replaces aliveness.

She didn’t ask me what to do.

She wasn’t ready for answers.

She just needed someone to sit inside the real question with her.

Not will this marriage work?

But who am I becoming while I wait?

This is the space I work in.

Not to tell you to stay.

Not to tell you to leave.

But to slow things down enough

for you to notice who you are becoming

before bitterness feels normal

before hardness feels earned.

Because most people don’t leave when it becomes unbearable.

They leave when they realise

they are no longer the person

they promised themselves they would protect.

If something in you went quiet while reading this —

not loud, not dramatic, just still —

that’s the part of you that already knows.

And it’s been waiting for you

longer than you think.