Moment Everything Changes

Captured by Mitchell Royel | Now Playing: Messy by Kiiara

Captured by Mitchell Royel | Now Playing: Messy by Kiiara

“There’s this moment that comes in every relationship—sometimes it’s sudden, sometimes it creeps up on you like a shadow you didn’t know was there. It’s the moment when you see someone differently. Not better, not worse necessarily. Just… different. Real.

You think you know someone. You’ve spent time with them, laughed with them, maybe even let your guard down. And then one day, something shifts. A word is said the wrong way. A look crosses their face that you’ve never seen before. And suddenly, you’re staring at a version of this person you didn’t know existed. A side that scares you.

It’s not always dramatic. It’s not always loud. Sometimes it’s quiet—the kind of scary that settles in your chest and makes you realize you don’t actually know what you’re looking at. You see the potential for something darker, something messier than you ever imagined. Maybe it’s anger you didn’t know they carried. Maybe it’s selfishness masked as love. Maybe it’s just the realization that people are more complicated than we want them to be.

And here’s the thing nobody tells you: once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

So you have a choice. You can stay and try to convince yourself it wasn’t real, that you imagined it, that they’re still the person you thought they were. You can rationalize it, minimize it, make excuses. Or you can do the harder thing. You can walk away.

I’m not talking about running at the first sign of trouble. Real relationships require work, require patience, require understanding that we’re all broken in different ways. But there’s a difference between broken and dangerous. There’s a difference between flawed and toxic.

Walking away isn’t always about them being a bad person. Sometimes it’s about protecting yourself from becoming someone you don’t recognize. Sometimes it’s about knowing that staying will only make things messier—not just for you, but for them too. Sometimes the most loving thing you can do is leave.

The hardest part isn’t the leaving. It’s the moment right before, when you’re standing at the edge of a decision and you know that choosing yourself means letting them go. It’s knowing that you could have stayed, could have tried harder, could have been the person who fixed them. But you also know that some things can’t be fixed by love alone.

So you walk away. Not because you don’t care. Not because they’re not worth it. But because you’re worth it too.

And maybe that’s the scariest thing of all—realizing that sometimes the person we need to protect ourselves from is someone we love.”

-Mitchell + Ryder (of Gospel Glamour)