I spent seven years believing in him. Seven years giving pieces of myself that I didn't even know I owned. Seven years hoping that love would protect me, hold me, and finally claim me in a way that mattered.
And for seven years, I was wrong.
I remember the first time I thought I had found something permanent. He smiled at me like the world had stopped spinning, and I believed that we were untouchable. I believed that kindness, care, and soft words could build forever. I gave him my mornings, my afternoons, my nights. I gave him my laughter, my tears, my unspoken dreams. I gave him myself.
And for seven years, I waited.
I waited for a ring that never came.
I waited for a promise that he never uttered.
I waited for acknowledgment that I was worth more than fleeting attention and stolen kisses.
I waited while he laughed with everyone else, while he smiled at others like they were the ones he had been searching for, and while I folded myself smaller just to fit the version of me he could tolerate.
I thought I was in love.
I thought I understood him.
I thought he understood me.
I was wrong.
It's embarrassing, in hindsight—this almost comical tragedy of my own devotion. I bend myself into shapes I wasn't meant to take just to earn someone's fleeting care. I silenced my doubts, ignored my instincts, whispered my own worth into a shadowed corner so that he wouldn't notice the cracks in me. And for what?
For nothing.
He never proposed.
Never even hinted at a future where I belonged at his side officially.
We were seven years of shared meals, shared memories, shared soft laughter in the dark. Seven years of loving, seven years of being patient, seven years of building a life that, to the world, looked perfect.
And yet… it was never enough.
And then I saw her.
The one he cheated with.
The one I had never liked him spending time with.
The one who spoke down to him, mocked him when she could, subtly undermined him while wrapping herself in his attention.
She was supposed to be the one I could trust in small ways—the friend I let into our circle. But no. She became the betrayal. She became the wound I didn't know I had until it bled into view.
He spoiled her.
Every tiny wish she had, every smile she feigned, he answered. He catered to her whims with devotion I had spent seven years begging for. He looked at her like she was the prize, like the love I gave freely for nearly a decade was meaningless.
And I… I was humiliated.
I was embarrassed for loving him, for trusting him, for believing that seven years of care could become something eternal.
I was embarrassed for every time I had defended him when others doubted him.
For every time I had silenced my own voice so that his ego could thrive.
For every smile I gave him when my chest was heavy with hurt.
I felt used.
Used in the way that no one can understand until it happens to them.
Used in the way that love is meant to uplift, but instead becomes a weapon to reinforce someone else's ego.
Used in the way that my patience, my care, my trust, my dreams—every act of devotion—was not reciprocated, not valued, and not returned in anything resembling the measure it deserved.
And the betrayal… the betrayal cut sharper because it was personal, intimate, public in all the ways that mattered most to me.
It wasn't a stranger. It was her.
The one I warned him about.
The one he said I didn't understand.
The one he pretended to tolerate.
And suddenly, I understood.
All the silences he gave me.
All the soft words that felt rehearsed.
All the kindnesses that seemed conditional.
They were rehearsal for someone else.
I remember the exact moment I realized it.
I didn't scream. I didn't cry at first. I just watched.
The way he laughed at her jokes—the jokes I had laughed at for him.
The way he held her hand the way he had held mine at the start, full of promise.
The way he leaned in when she whispered things in his ear—the same way he had leaned in when I had whispered secrets only for him.
And it wasn't just the intimacy. It was the favoritism. The blatant, unguarded attention he gave her while he left me in the wings.
I cried later, long into the night.
Not just because he had betrayed me, but because I had spent seven years waiting for someone to see me, to hold me, to love me fully—and I had given him everything, and he had given it to someone else.
I thought of all the ways I had been patient.
All the times I had bent over backward for him.
All the nights I had cried silently, hoping he would notice, hoping he would care.
All the mornings I had woken to make him coffee, to fix his life while mine quietly fractured.
And now, here was the proof.
The woman he had mocked and belittled, the woman I had despised in small, quiet ways, the woman I had never thought could tempt him—she had all the love, all the devotion, all the attention I had begged for and never received.
And he didn't even hesitate.
He didn't even pause to think of me.
I felt rage.
I felt humiliation.
I felt despair.
I wanted to yell at him in public.
I wanted to shake him until he felt my pain.
I wanted him to see the years I had given him, the nights I had cried, the way I had built a life for us that had been nothing but shadows.
And then I realized something colder.
I couldn't make him feel what I felt.
I couldn't make him value me.
I couldn't make him stop.
All I could do was feel it. All I could do was survive it.
And survive it, I would.
I thought about revenge in the quiet hours of the night.
Not dramatic revenge—not breaking him in public, not shaming him—but the slow, calculated revenge of living.
Of thriving.
Of letting him see me one day, fully, completely, and realizing the magnitude of what he had destroyed.
Seven years. Seven years of giving, hoping, believing, waiting.
And all of it, handed over to someone else who had mocked him as she pleased.
And yet, even in the shadow of betrayal, there was clarity.
He had shown me exactly who he was.
He had shown me exactly what love had never been.
He had shown me that I would not be saved by someone else, that my care could not make him care in return, that devotion alone does not guarantee protection.
I felt used.
I felt embarrassed.
I felt broken.
But I also felt awake.
For the first time, I saw the pattern.
The repeating error.
The endless cycle of giving, hoping, being disappointed.
And I promised myself:
I would never give that power to him again.
I would never be a shadow while someone else basked in the warmth that should have been mine.
I would not wait seven more years for someone who had already chosen someone else.
I cried for all the years lost.
I cried for the love I had offered freely.
I cried for every time I had smiled through pain, every time I had defended him, every time I had hoped for a future that didn't exist.
And then, slowly, I began to plan my own escape.
Not revenge through him—but through myself.
Through survival.
Through reclaiming every piece of me he had ignored, every hope he had trampled, every tear he had left behind.
I was embarrassed once, yes.
I was used for seven years, yes.
I was betrayed in the deepest way possible, yes.
But I was still here.
And for the first time, that was enough.