Created by Rachel Maria Kisellus

There’s no tidy way to name what happened next.

It wasn’t one thing. It wasn’t dramatic. That’s what made it so devastating.

It was subtle. A slow siphoning of trust. A gut feeling I kept brushing off.

She stopped seeing me. Not physically ~ we were in the same rooms, saying the right words ~ but something had shifted. I kept giving. She kept taking. And when I finally drew a boundary, she turned cold.

That’s when I realized:

This was never friendship. It was performance.

And I had been cast, without my consent, in a role I didn’t audition for.

The worst part wasn’t what she did.

It was how long I kept trying to make it okay.

Because I wanted it to be real.

I wanted her to care.

I wanted to believe that if I just softened enough, loved enough, forgave enough ~ she’d meet me there.

But instead, I cracked.

Quietly, invisibly, under the weight of a relationship I didn’t know was hollow.

That was the crushing.

And I didn’t know it then, but something sacred was happening underground.

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