I carried her voice inside my head for months. It judged me, dismissed me, questioned my worth. And then I realized: I get to decide which voices live inside me.This is how I evicted hers.
There was a time when I made someone else’s voice louder than my own.
She was my manager—hardworking, intelligent, close enough to power that her presence felt magnetic. I admired her reflexively, not because she demanded it, but because I hadn’t yet learned to trust my own judgment.
I gave her authority she never asked for and I never owed.
For a while, that arrangement held.
Until it collapsed.
When Admiration Becomes Self-Erasure
Slowly, I began to see what I’d been trained to overlook.
Mood swings that dictated the temperature of every interaction.
Sarcasm wielded like a scalpel, cutting down ideas before they could breathe.
An unspoken expectation that everyone else manage themselves around her emotional weather.
That isn’t leadership.
That’s control dressed up as competence.
But when you’ve placed someone on a pedestal, you don’t call it abuse right away. You adjust. You accommodate. You tell yourself you’re being mature, empathetic, professional. What you’re actually doing is abandoning yourself.
The Moment I Drew the Line
There’s always a moment—sometimes quiet, sometimes seismic—when your body decides it’s had enough.
Mine did.
I pushed back. Not aggressively, but clearly. Firmly. Without apology.
And in that moment, something fractured—not just between us, but within me.
The pain that followed wasn’t only about her behavior. It was about my own complicity.
I felt anger, yes. But also shame. A searing sense of self-betrayal for what I had tolerated, and for how long.
Worse still, she had moved inside my head.
Her voice. Her tone. Her dismissals played on loop. I spiralled whenever I saw her, heard her, sensed her nearness.
The exhaustion was suffocating.
When Forgiveness Became Freedom
One afternoon, walking through a quiet park, something shifted.
I sat down and wrote her a letter in red ink.
I didn’t accuse. I didn’t justify.
I apologized.
“I’m sorry for needing you to be someone you were never going to be.”
I never sent it.
But it changed everything.
I wrote out the entire history of our relationship—every moment, every wound. I did forgiveness work, not to excuse her actions, but to stop carrying their weight.
Slowly, the resentment loosened its grip.
Choosing Which Voices Get to Stay
Healing revealed something I hadn’t understood before:
Not all harm stays external.
Some of it installs itself as an internal voice.
For months, I carried her voice inside me—criticizing, dismissing, questioning my worth.
And then I realized something that unlocked everything:
I get to decide which voices live inside me.
Her behavior is hers.
Her limitations are hers.
Her inability to tolerate boundaries is hers.
I no longer rent space to voices that diminish me.
That was who I was then. This is who I am now.
And even back then, when it mattered most, I said no.
I chose myself.
Abundance, Authority, and One Final Question
Recently, an old fear resurfaced.
She’s the CEO of our department now. We haven’t spoken in years—not since the day I drew my line, the day I decided I would never again allow her to disrespect me.
And yet, the fear whispered:
What if she makes me irrelevant? What if she shuts me out?
Then I asked myself one clarifying question:
Is she my source of abundance—or is God?
A person can close one door.
They cannot close the entire horizon.
There are always more doors.
For the Woman Reading This
If you’re shrinking to accommodate someone else’s moods.
If you’re hearing a voice inside, you that doesn’t belong to you.
If you’re confusing endurance with strength.
Stop.
You are allowed to choose yourself.
You are allowed to revoke access.
You are allowed to stop listening.
Choosing yourself isn’t selfish.
It’s sovereign.
And once you do—there’s no going back.
Her limitations are not my ceiling.
One closed door is not a closed future.
I am the author of my inner world.
With love,
Salima
