🖤 Jess 🖤

But the truth is, the future I’m running toward is one where I finally choose myself.

Because for most of my life, I didn’t feel chosen at all.

Justin didn’t choose me.

That’s how everything unraveled in the first place.

And when you and K came into the picture, it felt like I was watching my life collapse while everyone else found somewhere soft to land.

He chose her.

You chose her.

She chose both of you.

I was left standing in the aftermath, trying to figure out how to survive while everyone else figured out how to move on.

I was the one left with nothing.

No stability.

No safety net.

No real home.

No support.

I was trying to hold myself together while worrying about bills, about where we’d live, about feeding the kids before I fed myself.

I was carrying depression, anxiety, and trauma while pretending I was strong enough to handle it, because I didn’t have another choice.

So when someone came along and made me feel chosen, it felt like oxygen after years of holding my breath.

For the first time, I felt like maybe I wasn’t too much.

Maybe I was worth loving.

But over time, I realized he wasn’t really choosing me.

He was choosing what I gave him.

The stability.

The loyalty.

The way I show up for the people I love, because I know what it feels like when no one shows up for you.

Then alcohol became the thing he chose most.

Again and again.

Every time I tried to walk away, he’d pull me back with promises, with pain, with the fear that if I left he might not survive it.

I stayed because I believed I could help him.

I stayed because I didn’t want to be another person who left.

I stayed because I thought love meant holding on harder.

All the while, I was trying to keep everything together.

Giving the boys stability.

Being the responsible one.

The dependable one.

The one who makes sure there’s food, the bills are paid, everyone feels safe.

I became the caretaker, the fixer, the strong one.

And somewhere in all of that, I stopped taking care of myself completely.

I lost pieces of who I was, little by little, thinking I was building a life when really I was just surviving.

I kept reaching for hope in places that only gave me heartbreak.

I made mistakes.

I hurt people.

I tried to protect everyone at once and ended up breaking parts of myself in the process.

Hurt people hurt people, and I’ve had to face that truth too.

But nothing shook me like the night he disappeared and I found his car on a wrecker hours later.

That moment cracked something open in me.

He wasn’t hurt, but he had lied, he had chosen alcohol again, and now he was spending the night in jail.

And I realized how exhausted I was from loving someone in a way that kept costing me pieces of my own life.

It was two days after my 33rd birthday and I finally broke.

And in that breaking, I saw something clearly for the first time.

I can’t save anyone.

I can’t fix anyone.

And trying to has only been slowly destroying me.

That’s when the deeper realization hit.

The only person who has consistently been there for me… is me.

So I made the hardest decision I’ve made in years.

I chose myself.

I walked away from the job that made me feel small.

I stopped carrying problems that were never mine to carry.

I decided my life doesn’t get to be built around surviving other people’s chaos anymore.

I will always choose my kids.

They are my heart.

But I’m finally allowing myself to believe they deserve a mom who isn’t just surviving, but living.

A mom who feels whole.

A mom who knows she deserves love that doesn’t feel like a fight for air.

The future I’m moving toward is one where I’m steady, safe, and finally at peace.

If you ever decide to meet me there, it will be because you see it too.

Because you want the same kind of love I do.

The kind that feels safe, mutual, and real.

Not something built on guilt or history, but on choosing each other fully.

I understand why you’re cautious.

I understand the hesitation.

And I respect your boundaries, because I’ve finally learned to respect my own too.

But I need you to understand something clearly.

I am not the same person I was when everything fell apart.

I’ve fought hard to survive, to grow, to rebuild.

And I won’t go back to a version of my life where I feel like I have to earn love or wait to be chosen.

I’m moving forward either way.

Toward peace.

Toward stability.

Toward a life that feels steady and real.

I want you to be part of that future.

I really do.

But only if you can stand next to me and choose it too.

Because I deserve a love that feels mutual, certain, and safe.

Hell, really the past three years have been full of hard lessons.

Painful lessons.

But they are lessons that I needed.

I've changed.

I've shed ideas and opinions that I have outgrown.

I've held the pieces of broken things that I tried to put back together, but couldn't.

I'm learning to accept that and walk away.

To choose myself over fixing what other people have broken.

It's working.

But I am not done.

I know there are a few more lessons.

A little more growing to do.

Or outgrowing.

Then I am going to sprint at the life I choose.