Let’s just tell the truth: Sometimes, you still love the person who hurt you.

Not because you’re weak.
Not because you’re broken.
But because the love was real—even if the relationship was not sustainable.

This is the space no one talks about. The space where you feel both:

“I still love him.”
“But I will never let him back into my life.”

That contradiction? It used to confuse me.
It used to make me think I wasn’t done.
That maybe I wasn’t strong enough. That maybe I’d go back.

But now I know—this is the strength.

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You can love someone and still say:

Never again will I abandon myself to keep you comfortable.
Never again will I beg for intimacy you were never willing to offer.
Never again will I explain to a grown man what love is supposed to feel like.
Never again will I wait for you to become the man I believed you could be.

You can carry love for someone and still choose peace over potential.
You can feel tenderness in your heart and still block their number.
You can think of them fondly sometimes and still not want to hear their voice ever again.

This is what healing actually looks like.

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For a long time, I thought moving on meant erasing the love.
But now I know: it means protecting it.
It means loving the part of me that loved him, without sacrificing who I am now to keep that love alive.

I don’t hate him.
I don’t wish him pain.
I just… don’t make space for him anymore.
Because loving him never meant I had to keep bleeding for him.

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And maybe you’re in that space right now.
Still loving.
Still remembering.
Still carrying pieces of someone who couldn’t carry you.

If so, let me tell you the thing no one else will:

You’re allowed to love him and still say never again.
You’re allowed to hold both.
And doing so doesn’t make you weak—it makes you whole.

That’s not confusion.
That’s closure.

And it is enough.