The Apology Tour

Being in an abusive relationship—especially an emotional one—can be the most isolating experience of your life. You don’t realize it while you’re in it, but the world around you starts to shrink. Friends fade. Family gets quieter. Your once-vibrant social life becomes replaced with long nights of overthinking and endless explanations that never seem to make sense, even to you.

For me, that isolation didn’t happen all at once. It started slowly, in the form of canceled plans and text messages I couldn’t find the words to answer. But the clearest evidence of how far I drifted came in the shape of one friendship—my best friend.

For three years, our conversations became a loop. Me: hopeful one day, heartbroken the next. She: listening, advising, loving me through my own confusion. I was always in some stage of the rollercoaster—trying to leave, thinking maybe she’d changed, trying again, spiraling back. She stayed through the tears, the voice notes, the 2 a.m. calls. Until she didn’t.

One day, she just… stopped answering.

At first, I told myself she was busy. Then I told myself maybe she just needed space. But when months turned into years, and our only exchanges became birthday messages—hers or mine—I realized the truth: she had quietly exited a story she no longer had the emotional capacity to hear.

And I get it.

I do.

Being friends with someone in an abusive relationship means loving a person who’s constantly being erased and rewritten by their circumstances. It’s showing up to the same heartbreak dressed in different clothes. It’s listening to promises that even you know won’t hold. It’s draining.

Now, my marriage is over. Officially, finally, mercifully over.

And when I went to text her the news—the “I did it, I finally left” message I had rehearsed a hundred times—I noticed the string of my own unread texts from years past. Little fragments of my loneliness preserved in blue bubbles: “Thinking of you.” “Miss you.” “Hope you’re okay.”

Nothing.

It hit me then that I’d been living in a kind of emotional quarantine for seven years. I emerged free but stripped of everything familiar. No home, no routine, no marriage, no best friend. Just me—and this ache that whispers maybe I owe everyone an apology.

An apology for disappearing into my pain.

For making every conversation about her.

For being too consumed to ask how they were doing.

For not being the friend, sister, daughter, woman I once was.

But here’s the part I’m trying to hold onto: I don’t owe anyone an apology for surviving.

What I owe—what I can offer—is accountability, empathy, and a quiet kind of gratitude for the people who loved me until they couldn’t. Because I understand now how heavy it is to love someone who’s drowning and can’t—or won’t—come up for air.

I hope one day she knows that I get it. That I love her still. That I understand the silence wasn’t cruelty—it was self-preservation.

And maybe, when the dust of my healing fully settles, I’ll reach out one last time. Not with another story about my heartbreak, but with an apology that isn’t drenched in guilt—just gratitude.

For being there.

For trying.

For loving me when I was hard to love.

Maybe this is what healing looks like: walking the road of your own apology tour, not because you owe the world something, but because you finally have the strength to face what your pain cost—and what it taught you.