How Did I Not See?
The moment the fog lifts, the truth becomes clear — and you finally realise you have the power to choose yourself, your voice and your freedom.
Awakening from Blindness
How did I not see? Was I truly so weak?
I thought I was strong, yet your silence would speak,
Why did I stay so long, trapped in your snare?
Why was it so hard to leave, I was lost in despair?
How did I miss all the red flags in view?
Only saw the good, the charm that you drew,
In a slow, insidious game, I was brainwashed and caught,
Blinded by hope, yet I fought and I fought.
Depleted and empty, inside I felt bare,
Stripped of my confidence, wandering in despair,
Lonely in your presence, emotionally frayed,
Checked out from the world, in darkness I stayed.
It took so long to leave, feeling unsafe,
Craving the shelter of emotional grace,
Yearning for safety, for a space that is whole,
In the journey of healing, I reclaim my own soul.
Now I stand firm, with lessons in hand,
For I’ve learned through the struggle, to take a new stand,
The past does not bind me; I’m rising each day,
In the light of my truth, I’m finding my way.
By Molly George
There can be a painful part of healing that nobody really talks about enough — the moment you begin to look back and see things differently.
You start asking yourself questions.
How did I not see it? Why did I stay? Why didn't I leave sooner? How could I have allowed this to happen?
And sometimes those questions can feel almost as painful as the memories themselves. But hindsight gives us something we didn't have at the time: clarity.
When you are living within an unhealthy or abusive relationship, you are not standing outside of it with a clear view of what is happening. You are living it. You are adapting to it. You are trying to make sense of it. You are holding onto the good moments, hoping they are the truth of the relationship, while trying to survive the moments that hurt.
Abuse doesn't necessarily begin with everything being awful. There can be charm. Affection. Promised change. Apologies. Moments that make you believe that the person you love is still in there somewhere. And slowly, almost without you noticing, your world can become smaller.
Your confidence can disappear. Your instincts can become something you question. You start second-guessing what you saw, what you heard, what you felt. You learn to tread carefully. You become hyper-aware of moods, words and reactions. You may find yourself changing your behaviour just to keep the peace. And eventually, you can become so disconnected from yourself that you don't even recognise the person looking back at you.
That doesn't make you weak. It makes you human.
It is easy to look back from the safety of now and wonder why you didn't simply walk away. But the person you were then didn't have the perspective you have today.
You were doing the best you could with what you understood.
You were hoping.
You were loving.
You were surviving.
And perhaps you were simply trying to get through one more day.
For me, awakening wasn't about suddenly understanding everything. It was a gradual lifting of the fog. A realisation that what I had normalised wasn't normal. That what I had accepted wasn't something I had to continue accepting. That love shouldn't require me to lose myself in order to keep it.
And with that realisation came another difficult truth:
I had to stop blaming myself for not knowing what I know now.
Healing isn't about rewriting the past. We cannot change what happened. But we can change the meaning we give it.
We can learn from it without allowing it to become our identity. We can recognise the red flags without living forever in fear of them. We can understand our trauma responses without being ashamed of them. We can forgive ourselves for the times we stayed, the things we tolerated, the things we said, the things we did to survive. And slowly, we can begin to reclaim the parts of ourselves that became lost along the way.
Our voice.
Our confidence.
Our boundaries.
Our choices.
Our ability to trust our own instincts.
Our right to take up space.
Our right to say no.
Our right to be loved without fear.
That is what this poem, Awakening from Blindness, represents for me.
Not simply waking up to what happened, but waking up to who I am beyond it.
Because there comes a point where the question changes.
It stops being:
“How did I not see?”
And begins to become:
“What can I see now?”
And that is where the healing begins. Not because the past suddenly disappears. Not because every day becomes easy. But because you begin to look forward instead of constantly looking back. You begin to understand that the person you were was worthy all along. You just couldn't see her clearly through the darkness. And perhaps that is the most beautiful part of awakening...
Realising that you were never truly gone. You were still there. Waiting for you to find your way back to yourself. And when you do, you don't have to become the person you were before.
You can become someone who knows their worth. Someone who trusts themself. Someone who understands that love and control are not the same thing. Someone who knows that peace should not have to be earned. Someone who finally understands that leaving the darkness isn't the end of the story.
It's the beginning of seeing yourself in the light.
Love Molly x