Pisces: The Version of Myself I Had to Kill

There was a version of me I had to kill.
Not because she was wrong.
Not because she was weak.
But because she kept loving people who didn’t know how to love her back.

She was the version of me who believed softness could save anyone.
Who thought empathy was enough to hold a relationship together.
Who confused connection with destiny.
Who saw red flags and called them “wounds” because it felt kinder.
She was the one who stayed even when she knew she was breaking.
The one who whispered, “Maybe if I love harder, they’ll understand me.”

I carried her for years.
The girl who answered late-night texts from people who never chose her in the daylight.
The one who forgave apologies that were never spoken.
The one who drowned quietly so everyone else could breathe comfortably.
The one who romanticized the bare minimum because it felt safer than being alone.

She thought her intuition was a responsibility.
She felt every shift in the room and adjusted herself to match it.
She sensed people’s sadness and tried to heal it.
She felt their fear and softened herself so they wouldn’t feel threatened.
She loved from a place so deep it could never be matched on the surface.

But she never asked for anything.
She didn’t know how.
She didn’t believe she was allowed.

And every time someone left, she didn’t just lose them.
She lost the version of herself she had created to make them feel loved.
She believed this was what love was supposed to be—
self-erasure masquerading as devotion.

The version of me I had to kill was the one who thought heartbreak was a soulmate.
The one who mistook longing for love.
The one who believed endings meant she wasn’t enough.

I didn’t kill her in anger.
I killed her in grief.
Because she deserved more than I kept allowing.
Because she was tired.
Because she had carried everyone’s emotions for so long that she forgot she had her own.

I had to kill the version of me who loved people at the cost of herself.
So a new version could rise—
one who still feels deeply but refuses to drown in it.
One who listens to her intuition but doesn’t use it to excuse bad behavior.
One who loves without disappearing.
One who knows that softness isn’t meant to be exploited.
One who finally understands that empathy is a gift, not a debt.

That old version of me was beautiful.
She was tender.
She was pure-hearted.

But she was never meant to survive the world as it is.

So I let her go.
Not to become colder.
But to become whole.