The Red Flags I Ignored in the Name of Love

 

The Red Flags I Normalized

As we were walking, tension filled the air. The child I loved though not my own had gone missing. Deep in my spirit, I already felt she was gone, but who truly wants to face a truth like that?

I remember stopping, turning to look at her in shock, and asking why she would say something like that when she suddenly stated, “She killed her child.”

She began sharing the conversations and calls she had been having with the young woman—speaking about her mother, her unhappiness, her misery. She went on to say that the mother was keeping the young woman’s food stamps, using that detail to support a narrative of blame and neglect.

I found myself pushing back again and again. I reminded her that she didn’t know the full reality. I had been there physically present stopping the young woman from running into the street, from banging her head against the cement. I had been a constant source of support, even while navigating my own struggles as a parent. Because of that, I knew this situation was not black and white.

Parenting and caregiving especially when disability or severe challenges are involved cannot be understood through assumptions or secondhand conversations. It is lived in moments of exhaustion, fear, love, and constant vigilance.

She grew visibly irritated with me.

And in that irritation, I saw a red flag:
my compassion wasn’t welcome unless it agreed with her conclusion.

But at that time, I was also fighting my own battles demons I hadn’t yet named. My home was heavy. My marriage was unraveling. My children were struggling, and I was struggling right alongside them. Life felt like survival, not reflection.

Divorce is never easy, especially when you’re fighting your own mental health while trying to keep your children steady as everything else feels like it’s falling apart. At the same time, I was standing alone against the Virginia Beach school system, fighting discrimination with no backup, no safety net, and no pause button.

Some days, I questioned whether I even wanted to live not because I didn’t love life, but because the weight of carrying everything alone felt unbearable. Every single day was a battle. Still, I showed up. I showed up for my children. I showed up for the individuals who depended on me. I showed up even when I was empty.

And in doing so, I was burning myself out trying to be everything for everyone while completely ignoring myself. I forgot that I was only one person. I forgot that even the strongest people need space to rest, to be held, to be seen.

At the funeral, she said it again.

Inside the funeral home where grief should have been sacred she repeated it:
“She killed her child.”

Later, she went even further, claiming that the ex-husband was angry and blaming the mother for the child’s untimely death. Claiming how she stole.someones else chiild was only suppose to keep him for a little while and never gave him back.  She was in communication with the mother and again. She got perturbed saying this lady can do not wrong in my.eyes. In my eyes it was noble. Lord knows I was sheltered kids disabled adults etc at the time in my home. I didn’t ask how. I didn’t ask why. I didn’t ask who said what.

Not because I didn’t hear her but because I am not a gossiper. And more than that, I was grieving. I didn’t want my name, my spirit, or my pain tied to conversations like that.

I was trapped in the quiet torment of what if.
What if I hadn’t missed that call?
What if I had shown up sooner?

I wasn’t analyzing anyone else’s story I was barely surviving my own. I was existing in shock, carrying sorrow, and trying to breathe through something that didn’t make sense.

So the red flag the way she continued to dig salt into an already open wound went ignored. Not because I didn’t see it, but because I needed connection more than clarity. I needed the friendships, even if they were quietly toxic and not fully real.

In my mind, they both were my friends.
And I loved them both.

I justified it not out of weakness, but out of exhaustion and the human need to belong. Looking back, I know I needed her then. She was there when no one else was. Her presence soothed my soul in a season where I was barely holding on, and in many ways, she may have saved me from the darkest thoughts that crossed my mind while I was trapped in a painful, destructive marriage at home.

Because of that, I excused things I normally wouldn’t. I told myself she was just like that sister in the family who always has something to say. And when I accept people, I accept all of them—not just the good parts.

But now I understand that while acceptance is powerful, there are red flags we should never ignore.

At that point in my life, the comments became normalized. Especially because my other friend would often speak negatively too calling her child “out of control” when she was overwhelmed, criticizing situations she shared, dissecting messages that should have been handled with care, not judgment.

Only later did I recognize what was happening:
I wasn’t surrounded by support I was standing in the middle of unresolved pain being projected back and forth, and I convinced myself it was normal because it felt familiar.

I had never fully experienced a healthy relationship. And the ones that were healthy, I often pushed away afraid they would see the dysfunction inside my own home. I was protecting appearances while quietly unraveling. I just wanted loyalty and to be loved.

The friend whose child passed would often speak harshly about people she claimed to lovecriticizing eating disorders, mocking low self-esteem, judging how others coped, how they loved, how they survived. I watched friends genuinely try to support her, only to have their personal struggles shared with me afterward, dissected and diminished.

And still, I stayed blind.

I told myself I was different. I believed that because I listened without judgment, because I showed compassion, I wouldn’t become a victim. I thought proximity to pain didn’t mean vulnerability to it.

But unresolved pain doesn’t discriminate it spreads.

What I see now is not betrayal alone, but a pattern I hadn’t yet learned how to interrupt. I mistook familiarity for safety. I confused access for trust. I believed I could stand in the middle without being affected.

That belief cost me clarity but it gave me discernment.

And discernment, once learned, changes everything.

The Moment I Finally Chose Myself

The red flags didn’t disappear all at once. They revealed themselves quietly in small moments where I chose myself instead of explaining, resting instead of rescuing, and listening to my spirit instead of overriding it for the comfort of others.

Years later, I stand in a different place. A place of growth. Of purpose. Of breath. I am finally divorced. The storm has passed, and the torment that once lived in my soul is slowly leaving. When I say I’ve been to hell and back, I don’t say it lightly. The struggle was real, relentless, and transformative.

Survival taught me strength.
Healing taught me discernment.

I reached a point where I no longer wanted to move for other people. I am not moving for monetary purposes, for validation, for approval, for recognition, for loyalty rooted in guilt, for obligation, for fear of abandonment, or for people-pleasing. I am done moving in survival mode and done living inside narratives that require me to betray myself to belong.

I am moving for peace.
I am moving for alignment.
I am moving for purpose.

I wanted growth and I wanted it together. I wanted her to grow with me. But instead of mutual evolution, what showed up was control. Instead of support, there was harm. Instead of shared joy, my happiness became something to diminish rather than celebrate. Her focus shifted outward, managing me, correcting me, holding power, while spending less time tending to herself, even though she was brilliant in her own right.

That brilliance could have been nurtured. Expanded. Honored.
But control became more important than connection.

And then the red flag came full force, right in front of me.

I didn’t walk away.
She did.

When she left, the grief hit immediately. I remember trying to reach her, trying to get her to see that I loved her. My abandonment and rejection wounds were at an all-time high, and I was not thinking clearly. I was grieving the loss while still holding on to the hope that love could repair what had already been fractured.

I was weak in that moment, emotionally exposed, and desperate not to lose another connection. I couldn’t initially see what was happening because my nervous system was already overloaded from everything I had survived before. I wasn’t operating from clarity. I was operating from fear of being left again.

I clung to the idea of connection because loss had followed me for so long that I didn’t know how to sit with it without trying to fix it. I confused attachment with safety and proximity with care. I wanted to believe that if I just explained myself better, loved harder, or showed up more, things would settle.

Grief has a way of clouding discernment, especially when old wounds are activated. And in that season, my heart was open, unguarded, and aching to be chosen back.

I even wrote her a letter. Not to persuade or accuse, but to speak from the place where I was still soft, still grieving, still hoping to be understood. Writing felt safer than talking. It was the only way I knew how to express what I couldn’t say out loud without breaking.

Later, I learned she mocked it. She shared how she ripped the letter up, spoke about it casually, almost proudly, as if my vulnerability was something to be discarded rather than honored.

That moment landed differently than the separation itself.

Not because the letter was rejected, but because it revealed how little care there was for the heart that wrote it. It showed me that what I had offered in sincerity was received with contempt, and that my openness had been treated as weakness instead of trust.

I didn’t confront it. I didn’t defend myself. I didn’t ask why.

I simply took note.

I no longer had the energy to fight for something that was clearly not love. I stopped explaining. I stopped defending. I stopped trying to prove my heart to someone who had already rewritten it in their mind.

Instead, I chose something unfamiliar but necessary. I let the universe clear the air.

That choice, silence, distance, surrender, became the moment where the heart revealed its true intentions. When control is no longer possible, truth surfaces. When access is removed, motives are exposed. And when you stop performing, people show you exactly why they needed you to stay small.

I didn’t chase the misunderstanding.
I didn’t correct the narrative.
I didn’t beg to be seen..

And that’s when the real story began.

What I didn’t know then, but would later understand, was that the separation didn’t end the control. It simply changed its form. What followed wasn’t loud. It wasn’t public. It was quiet. Calculated. Strategic.

Behind the scenes, she began moving, reaching out to people I loved, people I trusted, people I believed were safe. Conversations happened without me. Stories were told without context. One by one, connections were tested. Not for healing, but for influence. Not for truth, but for possession.

I didn’t see it at first. I couldn’t imagine someone choosing that path.

But distance has a way of revealing what proximity hides. I did not hit back and until this day her both their secrets and pain, tears will remain sacred to me. 

And that is where this chapter ends, not because the story is finished, but because what came next deserves its own telling.

Some truths don’t arrive loudly.
They unfold quietly.
And when they do, everything finally makes sense.