you are allowed to outgrow it.

you are allowed to outgrow it.

the person.

the friendship.

the relationship.

the job.

the dream.

the version of yourself who once swore she would never leave.

you are allowed to wake up one morning and realize that something you prayed for once is no longer something you want.

you are allowed to change your mind.

you are allowed to say no.

no explanation.

no twelve-paragraph justification.

no carefully constructed argument proving why your no is reasonable enough to be respected.

just no.

i think a lot of us were taught that boundaries are something we put in place when someone has done something terrible enough to deserve them.

but boundaries aren't punishment.

they aren't revenge.

they aren't cruelty.

sometimes nobody has to be the villain.

sometimes something simply doesn't fit anymore.

sometimes you love someone and still cannot continue loving them from the same distance.

sometimes you forgive someone and still don't give them access to you.

sometimes you understand exactly why someone is the way they are and decide you will no longer be collateral damage because of it.

compassion does not require access.

forgiveness does not require reconciliation.

history does not require permanence.

and love does not require self-abandonment.

you can love people you have outgrown.

you can miss people you no longer want back.

you can wish someone every beautiful thing in this world and still know that none of those beautiful things need to happen beside you.

you can be grateful for what something was without forcing it to become what it was never going to be.

and maybe the hardest part is accepting that leaving something behind doesn't always feel like freedom at first.

sometimes it feels like grief.

sometimes the right decision will absolutely break your heart.

sometimes choosing yourself will make you question yourself.

sometimes closing the door will have you sitting on the floor beside it wondering if you should open it one more time.

sometimes you will mourn the exact thing you know you cannot return to.

that doesn't mean you made the wrong choice.

it means it mattered.

there are lives we spend years imagining.

the marriage.

the house.

the friendships we thought would grow old beside us.

the traditions.

the holidays.

the photographs.

the people sitting around our table.

the version of ourselves we were so certain we would become.

and when those things don't happen the way we imagined, we are allowed to grieve them.

you are allowed to mourn a future that never technically existed.

because it existed to you.

you pictured it.

you planned for it.

you loved people inside of it.

you built entire rooms in your heart for a life you thought was coming.

of course it hurts when you realize you will never live there.

but here is what i am learning:

you can mourn the life you thought you would have while simultaneously building one you thought only existed in fairytales.

both can be true.

you can cry over what ended and be overwhelmingly grateful for what began.

you can miss who you were and love who you are becoming.

you can grieve the family you imagined while looking around at the family standing in front of you and realizing it is more beautiful, more honest, more peaceful and more full of love than anything you knew how to imagine before.

you can mourn the love you tried desperately to make work while discovering that love was never supposed to feel like trying desperately to make it work.

you can be sad.

and sure.

heartbroken.

and hopeful.

grieving.

and deeply, ridiculously happy.

we are complicated enough to hold both.

maybe healing isn't choosing which feeling gets to be true.

maybe healing is finally allowing all of them to exist without using one to invalidate the other.

because gratitude doesn't cancel grief.

and grief doesn't make you ungrateful.

missing something doesn't mean you need it back.

loving someone doesn't mean they belong in your life.

forgiving someone doesn't mean you owe them another opportunity.

and having spent years somewhere does not mean you have to spend one more day there.

you do not owe permanence to something simply because it once mattered to you.

read that again.

you do not owe permanence to something simply because it once mattered to you.

some things are chapters.

some people are teachers.

some relationships are bridges.

some versions of you were only built to get you through a particular season.

thank her.

love her.

and let her go.

you don't have to keep being her just because she kept you alive.

and you don't have to keep choosing what she chose when she didn't know yet what you know now.

that might be the most beautiful thing about becoming.

you get new information.

you learn.

you soften.

you get stronger in places nobody can see.

you stop calling chaos chemistry.

you stop calling exhaustion loyalty.

you stop calling silence peace.

you stop calling being needed being loved.

you stop measuring the goodness of your heart by how much mistreatment it can survive.

and eventually, your standards change.

your boundaries change.

your definition of love changes.

you change.

let yourself.

there will be people who preferred the version of you without boundaries.

there will be people who call your distance cold because they benefited from your unlimited access.

there will be people who remember every time you said yes and become deeply uncomfortable the first time you say no.

let them be uncomfortable.

your boundary does not become wrong because someone dislikes being on the other side of it.

you are allowed to protect the peace you fought this hard to find.

you are allowed to decide that your home will feel different.

that your children will see something different.

that love will sound different here.

that conflict will look different here.

that you will no longer confuse being a good person with being endlessly available.

you are allowed to build differently.

even if you once promised yourself something else.

even if people don't understand.

even if there are days when you don't completely understand it either.

because sometimes the life waiting for you requires you to stop negotiating with the one you have already outgrown.

and maybe that is the part nobody tells you about fairytales.

sometimes happily ever after doesn't begin when somebody comes to rescue you.

sometimes it begins when you finally stop abandoning yourself.

when you say no.

when you close the door.

when you choose peace without needing everyone to agree with your choice.

when you stop begging expired things to become new again.

when you let yourself grieve what could have been without allowing that grief to decide what still can be.

you can miss the old dream.

you can cry for her.

you can honor everything she wanted.

and then you can take her hand and show her what you built instead.

something softer.

something safer.

something real.

something she probably wouldn't believe was possible.

and maybe one day you will look around at this strange, beautiful, completely unplanned life and realize:

the fairytale wasn't the life that didn't happen.

it was the life you finally gave yourself permission to build.