my peace cost me my people

peace didn’t arrive gently. it came like a storm that refused to end—one that tore through everything i thought was solid. it ripped through my routines, my circles, the noise i used to mistake for love. for a long time, i begged for quiet. i thought i wanted calm seas. but no one told me that when the waves finally settled, the silence would sound like heartbreak. i thought peace would feel like freedom, but at first, it just felt like loss.

nobody warns you how lonely healing gets. they tell you it’s growth, evolution, self-love—but they don’t tell you that it often means sitting alone with the ghosts of everyone who couldn’t love you in your becoming. peace doesn’t keep company easily; it requires stillness, and stillness makes people uncomfortable. i started noticing it in small ways—people pulling away when i stopped venting, when i stopped overexplaining, when i stopped saying “it’s fine” after every disappointment. when i finally said, “no, actually, that hurt,” silence followed.

there’s this strange ache that comes with outgrowing the chaos you once called home. it’s like shedding a second skin that everyone else still wants you to wear. they loved me most when i was soft, compliant, endlessly available—the version of me that would fold herself in half just to keep the peace for others. but the peace i was keeping for them was the war i was losing with myself. when i stopped showing up to fight battles that weren’t mine, they called me distant. when i started protecting my energy, they said i’d changed. and maybe i did. maybe peace is just the slow undoing of every version of yourself built on survival.

what they don’t see is how heavy it is to hold everything together all the time. how much it costs to be the listener, the fixer, the one who always understands. peace demanded i stop rescuing everyone else and start saving myself. it told me to step back, to stop explaining why i needed space. it whispered that not everyone deserves access just because they had history. and that truth burned. i grieved the people who used to feel like home. i grieved the comfort of being known, even if it came with pain. i learned that sometimes, familiarity is just a softer word for destruction.

now, peace looks like long mornings where no one needs anything from me. it looks like not apologizing for resting. it looks like answering messages when i have the energy, not out of obligation. it feels like breathing in my own rhythm again. the quiet that once scared me now feels sacred. i no longer crave the noise that drowned me. i no longer beg to be understood by people who only loved the broken parts of me. peace didn’t come cheap—it took almost everything. but it gave me back myself.

so yes, my peace cost me my people. but i think that’s the tax on freedom. i didn’t lose them all at once—it was more like a slow, gentle pruning. like life was trimming away what no longer bloomed. and maybe that’s all healing really is: learning to stop watering what doesn’t grow with you. these days, i sit in my stillness without guilt. i miss them sometimes, of course i do. but when the ache rises, i remind myself—peace never asked me to be empty, only whole.

and finally, i am.

with ink + bloom, 🌻