The Day I Realized I Was the Toxic One (and Finally Decided to Heal)

I used to think everyone else was the problem.
My friends were “fake.”
My relationships were “unfair.”
The world just didn’t understand me or so I told myself.
But the truth?
The truth was uglier than I wanted to admit.
I was the one who kept showing up to battles I created in my own head.
I was the one holding on to pain like it was proof that I cared.
And when I finally looked in the mirror, I didn’t see a victim.
I saw someone who needed to heal… from herself.
The Moment I Broke
It wasn’t dramatic. No big fight, no emotional explosion.
It was a Tuesday morning, and I was crying over a text message that didn’t even deserve a reply.
That’s when it hit me I wasn’t sad because someone hurt me.
I was sad because I didn’t know how to stop chasing pain.
I kept replaying old arguments, waiting for apologies that would never come.
I kept blaming others for the chaos I created.
And I kept calling that “loyalty” or “love,” when it was really just self sabotage dressed as care.
The worst part?
I thought being “the one who feels deeply” made me the good guy.
But sometimes, being the one who “feels too much” just means you refuse to grow up.
When Healing Got Real (and Messy)
Healing wasn’t cute. It wasn’t journaling in sunlight or drinking green smoothies while listening to affirmations.
It was sitting alone at 2 AM realizing how often I lied to myself.
It was owning the fact that I was manipulative not because I was evil, but because I was scared.

Scared to lose people.
Scared to be wrong.
Scared to face the silence that comes when no one’s around to blame.
So, I started doing something I’d never done before I shut up and listened.
I stopped defending myself in conversations that didn’t need winning.
I stopped sending paragraphs to prove my point.
I started asking myself, “What if they’re right?”
And honestly, sometimes they were.
A Funny Kind of Freedom
Once you stop pretending to be perfect, life becomes kind of funny.
You realize how dramatic you used to be.
You laugh at the way you used to beg for closure like it was a prize you could earn.
You start noticing peace where chaos used to live.

You don’t need everyone to like you anymore.

You stop being “the main character” in everyone’s story and just start living your own.
I started saying “I was wrong” without choking on it.
I started saying “I’m sorry” without turning it into an essay.
I started letting people walk away even the ones I thought I couldn’t live without.
And the craziest part?
I didn’t fall apart.
I actually started feeling lighter.
What Healing Really Means
Healing isn’t about becoming perfect.
It’s about becoming aware.
It’s realizing that not everyone who hurt you was evil and not everyone you hurt was weak.

It’s about holding yourself accountable without hating yourself.
It’s forgiving the version of you that didn’t know better.
It’s learning that growth doesn’t always feel good — sometimes it feels like losing.
But loss isn’t failure.
Sometimes losing what’s unhealed is the only way to find peace.
So now, when people ask me what “healing” looks like, I tell them this:
It’s the quiet moment you finally stop blaming everyone else.
It’s the day you stop rewriting old stories to make yourself the hero.
It’s the moment you realize
you can’t grow if you’re still protecting your pain.
The Truth I Needed to Hear
Here’s what no one told me about growth:
It doesn’t always come with a glow-up.
Sometimes it looks like deleting numbers, staying home, and being misunderstood for a while.
Sometimes it means being the “bad guy” in someone else’s story because you finally stopped playing the fool in your own.
Sometimes it means missing people you know you can’t have back.
And sometimes it means loving yourself enough to stop chasing the same lessons.
You can’t heal in the same room that broke you.
You can’t move forward while replaying what happened.
And you can’t keep calling pain “loyalty.”
So yes maybe I was the toxic one once.
But at least now, I’m the aware one.
And awareness? That’s where freedom begins.
Final Thoughts:
If you’re reading this and you’re tired of the same pain showing up in different faces stop running from your reflection.

Look at it.
Own it.
And start over, gently.
You don’t need to be perfect to deserve peace.
You just need to be honest.
That’s where healing really starts.
#healing #growth #selfworth