Diaries of a Twenty-Six-Year Old Girl

My mother told me the other day,
“I just need to be like you.
I need to detach, never feel,
then I can never get hurt.”

That comment hit me like a truck—
not because I couldn’t detach,
but because of the reason behind it.

I felt everything deeply.

What she couldn’t see in public
was everything I carried in private.

Yes, I looked emotionally stable. Because I was.
Yes, from the outside,
I seemed like someone who could walk away forever.
Because I could.

But what she didn’t understand
was that my hard exterior shell held everything inside.

I was a container,
carrying chaos almost every day.

I cried every day.

I let myself feel things.
I forgave people over and over again
just to set myself free.
I worked through my emotions.

I didn’t detach
because I felt nothing.

I detached
because I felt everything.

And when you allow yourself to grieve,
to cry,
to get angry,
to process everything
and still choose yourself—

that’s when real detachment can begin.

Not because you numb yourself to the pain,
but because you don’t abandon yourself through it.