Chapter 4 – The One Who Changed

I didn’t recognise myself anymore — not in the mirror, not in my own thoughts.

There was a time I used to laugh without overthinking how my face looked while doing it. A time I ate food without calculating the calories, without guilt, without punishing myself afterward with a 10km run. But that version of me had faded, starved out by insecurity and comparison.

I had lost 12 kilograms.

People started complimenting me — “You look so good!” “You’ve gotten so lean!” — and I’d smile, but it was hollow. Because the truth was, it wasn’t health. It was heartbreak. It was skipping meals because I’d rather feel hungry than feel unworthy. It was pushing myself in the gym until my legs shook because maybe, just maybe, he’d find me beautiful again if I looked like her.

Whoever she was.

The ones he messaged.

The ones who made me feel like I was never enough.

He never told me to change.

But he didn’t need to.

Every time he flirted with someone else, every time he looked through me like I wasn’t there, I shrank a little more.

In body.

In voice.

In presence.

I started eating from kids’ plates. Obsessing over portion sizes. Googling “how to lose fat fast” in the middle of the night while he slept beside me, breathing easy, completely unaware of the storm raging in my head.

I thought if I changed enough, he’d come back to me — the real me.

That maybe I could fix what he broke by breaking myself a little further.

I remember standing in the mirror one morning, pulling at my sides, checking every angle, whispering, “Just a little more. Then he’ll want you.”

That’s what falling too hard for someone who doesn’t love you right does — it convinces you that love must be earned, even if it costs you everything.

And it did.

It cost me my confidence. My spark. My softness.

And eventually, it cost me my dignity.

Because one night, after weeks of feeling invisible and unwanted, I did the one thing I swore I’d never do.

I kissed someone else.

It wasn’t planned. It wasn’t some cold, calculated revenge. It was weakness. Pain. A desperate moment of validation. A friend of a friend who looked at me the way he used to. Who made me feel seen — even if just for five minutes.

I pulled away almost immediately. The guilt hit before I even got in my car.

But the damage was done.

And I couldn’t keep it a secret.

I told him the next day.

We were sitting in his room. His TV was on, but neither of us were watching. I looked at him — really looked — and I couldn’t keep lying to his face.

“I need to tell you something.”

His jaw clenched before I even spoke. Like he could already sense the shift.

“I kissed someone.”

Silence.

Then a laugh — short, sharp, humorless.

“You’re joking.”

“I’m not.”

He stood up so fast the chair scraped the floor. “After everything I’ve done for you?”

The irony almost made me laugh.

Everything he had done?

“You mean after everything you’ve done to me?” I asked softly.

He stepped closer. “You think that justifies cheating?”

“I don’t know. I just know I was hurting.”

He didn’t say anything for a while. Just stared at me with this look — not of heartbreak, but of ownership.

“You’re mine,” he said. “Do you understand that? Mine.”

I felt my body tense.

This wasn’t love anymore.

It was possession.

He didn’t leave.

He didn’t break up with me.

Instead, he got worse.

He started asking where I was at all times. Demanding passwords. Commenting on what I wore — “Is that for someone else now?” Making me feel like everything I did was suspicious.

He checked my phone. Questioned me over harmless conversations. Compared me to other girls, then told me I’d never be like them.

And I started to believe it.

That I was tainted.

That I was the villain now.

That I had no right to feel hurt anymore — because I had hurt him back.

That’s the thing about toxic love. It confuses your compass. Makes you think your pain is punishment. That you deserve to stay because you’re no longer clean.

I began punishing myself in new ways.

I stopped eating dinner. Started weighing myself twice a day. Pushed myself to train harder — even when my body screamed for rest. My life became numbers: calories, steps, macros, minutes fasted.

He didn’t notice.

Or maybe he did, and just didn’t care.

I would’ve done anything to be chosen again.

To be the girl he couldn’t stop posting.

The one he bragged about.

The one he made me believe I was in the beginning.

But no matter how much I changed, he still looked at me like I wasn’t enough.

And eventually, I started looking at myself the same way.