Choosing yourself feels like losing everyone

The best time to choose yourself is when choosing yourself feels like losing everyone and everything.

Because choosing yourself often comes at the highest cost — when it feels like you’re standing alone, losing the people, places, and parts of your life you thought you couldn’t live without. But that’s also when it matters most. It’s in that breaking point that self-respect, self-worth, and freedom are born — not from comfort, but from courage.

Choosing yourself will feel like losing everyone and everything. That’s when it cuts the deepest — when you’re forced to decide between betraying yourself or letting go of everything familiar.

Choosing yourself isn’t some soft, pretty thing; it’s war. It’s the tearing down of illusions, the death of comfort, the silence after everyone walks away. It’s realizing that love shouldn’t require self-abandonment, that loyalty shouldn’t feel like a cage.

You will grieve. You will burn. But in that wreckage, you’ll rise — not as who they wanted, but as who you truly are. Choosing yourself is not a loss — it’s the beginning of everything real.

— Sadia Hakim // Letters Unsent