Thought Catalog

You Are Not What Someone Else Did To You

I hope you don’t believe what they did to you was your fault. Maybe you made choices that make you think it was your fault, but you have to remember we don’t always make the best decisions when we’re doing our best to simply survive. Sometimes when we’re living in survival mode we hold onto anyone who holds out a hand even if that hand is deceiving. These are the kind of hands that lie. The kind of hands that touch people for their own pleasure. The kind of hands that get what they want however they want to. The kind of hands that are weak and don’t deserve the souls they take advantage of.

The souls they take advantage of are the kind who love more than the love they receive. The kind who don’t stop caring about others even if others haven’t cared enough about them like they are worthy of. The kind that have been through too much. The kind that are doing their best to keep going even though life keeps beating them down. The kind that everyone wants to know and love.

Maybe in the season it happened you were trying to be someone you aren’t because being yourself was too hard. Maybe you were trying to escape your reality because your reality became too hard to live in. Maybe what you believe in was used against you and now you don’t know what you believe in. I hope that no matter what happened to you, you find the peace to believe in yourself.

I hope that no matter what happened to you, you know that you can find whole healing. I hope you offer yourself all the time you need to find your healing. People will try to make you talk through it. People will think they know what’s best for you but at the end of the day you are the only one who knows what’s best for you. Trust your instincts. Trust the inner voice that is nurturing and kind.

More than anything, I just hope you don’t give up on yourself. I hope you don’t give up on the dreams you know you are capable of. I hope you don’t give up on the future you are excited to live with someone who is incredibly good to you.

I hope you know you will find someone who is incredibly good to you if you haven’t yet. I hope you know it’s not too late to find that someone. It’s never too late to start over because sometimes starting over is the best decision we’ll ever make for ourselves. You deserve to be held by hands that are pure and kind. I hope you’re proud of the person you are because you are someone no one could ever be.


This is an extract from All That You Deserve by Jacqueline Whitney, published by Thought Catalog Books and available for sale exclusively at Shop Catalog. You can order the book here.