I didn’t always know who I was.

For a long time, I was the version of me that made life easier for everyone else. I was the “nice one”, the one who didn’t cause tension, the one who thought carefully about how she came across so nobody else would feel uncomfortable. On the outside, my life probably looked fine. But on the inside, it didn’t feel like I was actually living it. It felt like I was constantly adjusting myself, second-guessing what I said, worrying about how I was being perceived, and trying to stay safe by being liked.

And without realising it, I slowly drifted further and further away from myself.

At the time, I didn’t see it as a problem. Nothing was “wrong” on paper, I wasn’t in crisis or falling apart. I was functioning, but I was also disconnected. I would make decisions and immediately question them, I would say yes when I meant no, I would feel responsible for how other people felt, even when it had nothing to do with me and I started to realise I didn’t really know what I wanted anymore - just what I thought I should want.

The moment it became impossible to ignore wasn’t some dramatic moment, it was quiet. It was the accumulation of small moments where I would think, “I don’t feel like myself”, or “I don’t know why I’m doing this”, or “this doesn’t feel like my life” and underneath all of that was something I didn’t yet have the words for... I was abandoning myself in order to belong.

At first, I thought I just needed to be more confident or more certain or more together. But what I slowly started to realise was that it wasn’t about becoming someone new, it was about noticing how often I left myself in conversations, in relationships, in decisions, in the way I shaped myself around other people’s expectations just to keep things okay.

And once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it.