Today’s therapy session was a little different. I was asked to bring something that symbolizes my past, something that holds a piece of a story I once lived through. I don’t really hold on to material things, so I felt a little stuck at first. The only thing I truly carry from the past is my journal. It’s where I’ve poured my thoughts, feelings, and fragments of my life as they were happening. What was once my “present” is now sealed in ink as my “past.”So, I brought it with me. When I opened a random page, I found myself staring at an entry about an incident I hadn’t revisited in a long time.
The story went like this. There were two girls, let’s call them Grace and Shiela. Grace was new to me at the time; I had only known her for about a week. She was close to Shiela, and I needed to get in touch with Shiela. I asked Grace for her number, and what happened next completely shifted things. Instead of just sending me the contact, Grace mistakenly sent me a message that was actually meant for Shiela. It read something along the lines of, “Girl, just send your backup number so I could not disturb them.”
I remember feeling taken aback, confused, and silent. I didn’t react. I let it pass. But the next day, when I saw Grace, she was crying hysterically as if we were in the middle of some fight I didn’t even know about. She was shaking, drowning herself in tears, and all I could say was, “Stop crying. I did nothing to you, I just arrived here.”
That’s when I stopped reading the journal.
But sitting there in therapy, I realized something that my younger self couldn’t see. That moment was not just a misunderstanding, it was manipulation. Grace played the victim so convincingly that it shifted the entire narrative. She pulled sympathy, made it look as though she had been wronged, when in truth, I was the one blindsided.
It gave me chills because I now see how well she played the role. And here’s the heavier truth: sometimes, people don’t have to fight you directly to bring you down. Sometimes, all they need to do is convince others that you’re the problem.
Looking back, I also realized something else. Some people get intimidated by you, even when you haven’t done anything. Sometimes all you did was stand up, exist in your strength, and they already felt threatened. They see the potential in you, what you could become, and that alone is enough for them to try and dim your light.
But here’s the thing about time, it’s the ultimate truth teller. No matter how good someone is at pretending, the truth has a way of surfacing. Masks eventually slip. Shiela, the other girl in this story, couldn’t hold back her demons forever. Slowly, her truth began to unravel, and in that unraveling, I understood the saying, “Change is the ultimate apology.” Because no amount of words could undo the things she did, the only real apology she could offer the world would be to become someone better.
As for Grace, I don’t know where she is today. Maybe she’s thriving, maybe she’s struggling. Either way, I genuinely hope life is treating her well because carrying bitterness only weighs me down.
That old journal entry reminded me of something powerful: not everything broken needs fixing. Some things are just lessons, meant to be understood, learned from, and released.
And me? I choose to keep standing. To keep shining, even if it intimidates others. Because the right people won’t fear my light, they’ll shine with me. ✨
👉 Has time ever revealed a truth to you that completely changed the way you saw the past?
