Recently, someone said something to me that stopped me in my tracks:

“Despite his best attempts, he hasn’t managed to kill your soul.”

Another person told me, “You still have a large, soft heart… you’re still open to love.”

To most people, these might sound like simple observations.
To me, they felt like music.

Because after everything I have endured, I truly believed that part of me was gone forever.

There is something that happens when you go through prolonged emotional pain, control, or abuse. It doesn’t just hurt you—it slowly tries to reshape you. It makes you question your worth, your instincts, your reality. And perhaps most dangerously, it tempts you to shut down completely, just to survive.

For a long time, I thought that’s what had happened to me.
That I had become harder. Colder. Closed.

But hearing those words made me realise something profound:

I may have been hurt, but I was not destroyed.

Somewhere underneath the exhaustion, the healing, and the rebuilding…
my core remained intact.

My ability to love.
My capacity for kindness.
My openness to connection.

That doesn’t mean I am the same person I once was.

And that’s important.

Because healing isn’t about going back—it’s about going forward with awareness.

Today, being “open” no longer means being unguarded.
Having a “soft heart” no longer means accepting poor treatment.
Loving deeply no longer means losing myself in someone else.

I am learning that strength and softness can coexist.

That you can be kind and have boundaries.
Open and discerning.
Compassionate and self-protective.

I still have a long way to go. Healing is not a straight line, and there are days when the weight of everything feels heavy. But with the right support, and the guidance of professionals, I am finding my way back—not to who I was, but to someone stronger, clearer, and more grounded.

And perhaps that is the real victory.

Not that I survived.
But that I survived without losing the very essence of who I am.

They didn’t kill my soul.

And now, I get to protect it.