Maybe I’m Not Broken — Maybe I Was Just Never Loved Safely

I’ve been sitting with a thought I don’t like admitting out loud.

Maybe I’m the problem.

Because when you line my life up like evidence, it looks bad.

Not wanted by my mum.

Sent into foster care at nine.

Abused by someone who shared my blood.

Passed between homes until sixteen.

Then relationship after relationship with men who controlled me, hurt me, or slowly erased parts of me.

At some point, it stops feeling like bad luck and starts feeling like a pattern.

And when you’re the only thing that shows up in every chapter, you start wondering if the damage is coming from inside the house.

The Ugly Question

Here’s the one I don’t post on Instagram.

The one I don’t say to my friends.

What if something about me makes people treat me like this?

What if I’m built wrong?

Too emotional.

Too intense.

Too forgiving.

Too easy to wear down.

What if I walk into relationships already marked as someone who can be pushed, bent, shaped, controlled?

That thought will eat you alive if you let it.

What Growing Up Without Love Actually Does

People like to romanticise “being strong.”

They don’t talk about what it costs.

When you grow up unwanted, unsafe, or disposable, you don’t learn how to be loved. You learn how to not be left.

So you become:

• Hyper-aware of people’s moods

• Careful with your words

• Quick to apologise

• Willing to shrink to keep peace

• Loyal past the point of self-respect

  
  

You don’t ask, “Is this good for me?"

You ask, “How much of this can I survive?”

And that’s how pain starts to feel normal.

Why I Stayed When I Should’ve Left

I didn’t stay because I didn’t see the red flags.

I stayed because being alone felt more dangerous than being hurt.

When you’ve been abandoned early, your nervous system doesn’t hear “space” or “distance. "It hears: You’re about to be left again.

So you cling.

You explain.

You rationalise.

You forgive things you swore you never would.

You start thinking love is something you earn by enduring.

Let’s Talk About Abuse Without Sugar-Coating It

Here’s the part I had to stop lying to myself about.

I didn’t “attract” abuse because I’m broken.

I tolerated it because my baseline for how I deserved to be treated was already low.

That doesn’t make me toxic. It makes me trained.

Trained to stay.

Trained to adapt.

Trained to survive instead of walk away.

But let’s be clear about something people love to blur:

No one is abused because of who they are. They are abused because of what someone else chooses to do.

Full stop.

The Pattern I Actually See Now

When I stop hating myself long enough to look honestly, I see this instead:

I don’t fall for cruel people because I like pain. I fall for people who feel familiar.

Emotionally unavailable feels like home.

Hot and cold feels like childhood.

Being needed but not cherished feels normal.

Healthy doesn’t feel exciting when chaos is what raised you.

The Truth That Stings the Most

I didn’t learn how to be loved.

I learned how to be useful.

Be supportive.

Be understanding.

Be the one who stays when things get hard.

And somewhere along the way, I confused being needed with being valued.

The Curse I Keep Joking About (But Secretly Believe In)

Sometimes I tell myself I’m cursed.

Not in a gothic, witches-and-spells way. More like a bad energy that clings. Like, no matter where I go, what I build, or whom I love, the same chaos eventually finds me. Different faces, different names, same ending.

I’ve called it a lot of things in my head:

Crazy.

Unstable.

A shadow.

A sinister clown that shows up in every chapter of my life and ruins the scene.

And I know how that sounds.

Dramatic.

Unhinged.

Like I’m romanticising my own damage.

But the feeling itself is real.

It’s the feeling of inevitability.

Like I’m walking a track that was laid down before I even knew how to choose a different road.

What the “Clown” Actually Is

Here’s the part I’m only just starting to admit:

The thing that feels like it’s following me isn’t a curse.

It’s my nervous system.

It’s the part of me that grew up in instability and learned, very early, that peace doesn’t last. That safety is temporary. That something bad is always just around the corner.

So even when things are good, I don’t fully settle into them.

I wait for the drop.

I scan for the shift.

I brace for the moment it all turns.

And when it finally does, a twisted part of me thinks: There it is. I knew it.

Not because I wanted it — but because my body expected it.

The Loop

This is the loop I’ve lived in for most of my life:

Chaos feels familiar.

Familiar feels safe.

Safe feels like love.

So I walk toward what feels like home, even when “home” is loud, unpredictable, controlling, or cold.

Then when it falls apart, I don’t just grieve the person or the situation. I grieve the idea that maybe this time it would be different.

And that’s when the “curse” story comes back.

Because it hurts less to believe I’m doomed than to keep believing I deserve better and not getting it.

The Sinister Clown in the Mirror

Here’s the most uncomfortable truth in all of this:

Sometimes the thing I’m running from looks back at me.

Not because I cause the harm — but because I’ve been shaped by it.

I’ve learned how to: Stay too long.

Explain too much.

Give more than I have.

Make myself smaller so someone else doesn’t leave.

And when I do that, I become part of the pattern I hate.

Not the villain — but the one who keeps the door open.

The Part No One Sees

People see the strength.

The resilience.

The “you’ve been through so much” version of me.

They don’t see the exhaustion that comes from always feeling like you’re fighting something invisible.

They don’t see how tiring it is to constantly ask yourself:

Is this my intuition… or my trauma talking?

Is this a real red flag… or am I just waiting for things to go wrong?

Am I protecting myself… or sabotaging myself?

Living in that grey area is its own kind of hell.