**This was a hard lesson for me.**

You can know someone for years—share your deepest thoughts, your time, your love—and still not truly know who they are. That realization is earth-shattering. It's like the foundation of your reality gets ripped out from under you. One of the reasons it’s so hard to come to terms with is because of something called *cognitive dissonance*.

When someone shows us love, kindness, or care—maybe they made us feel special, needed, or even safe—our mind forms a narrative: *they're good.* But when that same person turns around and lies, gaslights, manipulates, or hurts us deeply, we feel a powerful emotional conflict. Our brain tries to protect us from that confusion by holding onto the original version of them—the “good” one—even when the evidence starts to say otherwise.

We tell ourselves things like,

*"They're just stressed."*

*"They didn’t mean it."*

*"But they were there for me when I needed them."*

So we ignore the red flags. We minimize the hurt. We make excuses. Until the hurt becomes too frequent and too intense to ignore. Until the good moments become so rare that we realize they were never consistent, and maybe never even real.

That moment of clarity is devastating—but also freeing.

Because you finally see them for who they are, not who you *hoped* they were. And in that truth, you begin to break the cycle. You begin to choose yourself. That is where healing starts: not in denying the pain, but in **recognizing it was real**, and you **deserve so much better**.