There's a new K-drama making the rounds "As You Stood By" and while it's fiction, it shook something deep in me.
Recently, I watched this K-drama, and that something in me has refused to settle. Not because the plot was dramatic, K-dramas excel at that though, but because the emotions were real... Perhaps too real.
This was the kind of real that you recognize not only in the actress, but in the women around you. In the friend who always says, "I'm fine." In the sister who carries more than she tells. In the woman reading this, pretending she's only here out of curiosity. Or the woman you greet every morning who smiles like nothing is wrong. As you know, people don't easily talk about these things.
The story mirrored what too many women live through: loving deeply, sacrificing endlessly, and slowly disappearing under the weight of someone else's priorities, whether at home or at work.
And that's where our chapter begins... with a woman just like that.
There's a type of pain that doesn't announce itself with shouting. It doesn't bruise the skin, and it doesn't knock you off your feet or land you in the hospital. It slides in quietly, like a slow leak in a closed room. You don't notice it at first. You just feel a little tired, a little off, a little less like yourself.
Her name was Seyi, but that isn't the important part. What matters is that she was once the kind of woman who filled a room without trying. She owned every gathering she attended. She laughed with her whole body, prayed with sincerity, and loved with intention. People envied her peace and every woman wanted to be her.
Until she fell in love with a man who slowly convinced her that peace was a luxury she didn't deserve.
It didn't happen in a dramatic moment. It started slowly and sneakily... Like they always do.
She had waited five long years for a baby. Prayed. Cried. Swallowed the monthly disappointment like bitter medicine. Absorbed every insult, sarcasm, and negative sentences from those she called family.
Every sentence came like a drop of water on stone, small, forgettable, seemingly harmless. But just like most people, she too forgot that when water hits long enough, it can reshape mountains... Just like it reshaped her.
She learned to shrink her laughter so it wouldn't look childish.
She learned to tread lightly so she wouldn't be called dramatic.
She learned to apologize first, even when she was the one hurt.
She learned to accept excuses instead of accountability.
She learned to stay quiet when she should have asked questions.
She learned to wait… and wait… and wait… for the version of him she kept seeing in her head but rarely saw in real life.
So when the bleeding started that Sunday evening, it didn't register as fear at first. It registered as betrayal by her own body, by fate, and eventually, by the man who vowed to stand by her.
She dragged herself outside, one hand clutching her abdomen, the other gripping the gate for balance. Her husband didn't pick her calls. He hadn't picked most of them lately. It was a neighbor, a woman whom she barely spoke to that rushed her to the hospital.
The surgery happened in a blur: doctors, bright lights, questions she could barely answer...
When she woke up, groggy from anesthesia and grief, The doctor standing by her bed gave her the news gently. "I'm so sorry ma'am, We did everything we could. You'll need to rest now."
She heard from the nurse that her husband hadn't arrived yet, because he was stuck in the office.
She blinked slowly, letting the words settle like stones at the bottom of her chest.
Her husband was stuck in the office on a Sunday, while she had traveled to oblivion and back.
Once her husband came, so came the hugs, the promises but never what she realty wanted.
"Don't worry, we'll try again"
"You should have been more careful"
"You're not alone"
As her husband continued, she caught a glimpse of her reflection on the stainless flask, and thought, "Who tilted my crown?"
And that was the moment it hit her.
It wasn't the loss of the pregnancy, they would mourn that later. It wasn't the physical pain, that would heal.
What broke her was the realization that she had been fighting alone for a long time without admitting it to herself. She had been stretching, bending, giving, fixing… while he stood comfortably still.
She used to think that love meant sacrifice, that a woman's prestige would be marked by how well she married. That the measure of a woman's strength was how much she could endure without complaint. But lying in that hospital bed with an empty womb and a man that was repeating his usual lines, she understood something with brutal clarity:
She hadn't tilted her crown. Life had. Repeated disappointments had. His carelessness had. Her fear of being alone had. Her hopes, her good, pure, stubborn hope, had done the rest.
It was the chilling realization that she had become the one holding the relationship together… and she was doing it alone.
The pain was heavy, but the truth behind it was heavier:
She loved him.
But loving him was hurting her.
She had to lose a part of her entire world to learn this lesson. Ha! What a cruel lesson life had thought her.
And that is a lesson many women learn the hard way:
Love is not supposed to wound you into silence. It is not supposed to require your brokenness to function. It is not supposed to make you feel small so another person can feel big.
When love starts to hurt more than it heals, it is no longer love. It is attachment. It is fear. It is hope mixed with memory, not reality.
The night she returned home, Seyi sat down that night and did something she hadn't done in months maybe years even. she breathed and cried with her entire being
Because she had realized something so simple yet so powerful:
"If I don't choose me, no one else will."
Women are conditioned, by culture, by upbringing and by silent expectations to hold on.
To endure.
To forgive.
To stay.
To bend.
To prove they are good women.
To show strength by carrying pain without complaint.
But there is a thin line between patience and self-abandonment.
When you find yourself hesitating to express discomfort because you fear being dismissed…
When you adjust your personality to fit someone's insecurities…
When your heart feels like it's always begging for crumbs…
When the relationship drains you more than it fills you…
That is not love.
That is erosion.
The most dangerous thing about emotional erosion is that it's gradual. By the time you realize how far you've sunk, you're already halfway buried. And climbing out feels like betrayal, even when saving yourself is the only sane thing left.
But here's the truth no one says enough:
Leaving doesn't mean you stopped loving someone.
It means you started loving yourself too.
Seyi didn't leave because she was tired of him, she didn't give up her man or her home, she stayed and she changed because she knew that...
She deserved softness.
She deserved ease.
She deserved someone who didn't require her pain as proof of her loyalty, and she bent her man to fit her.
Your story may be different from Seyi's, your strength may be different but one thing that will never change is that... You too deserve a love that does not require your suffering as currency.
You are not meant to bleed so someone else can bloom.
The moment it hits you, whether today, tomorrow, or five years from now, I hope it comes with clarity, not shame. I hope it comes with courage, not fear. And I hope it reminds you that your life is allowed to be gentle.
Because the most important person is you.
And the moment you choose yourself, everything changes.