What It Feels Like to Be the Girl No One Stayed For

There’s a kind of loneliness you can’t explain until you’ve lived it—the loneliness of being the girl no one stayed for.

I don’t just mean the boyfriend who left when things became inconvenient, or the friend who stopped calling after she found someone else to sit with at lunch. I mean the kind of leaving that begins early, before you even had the words to describe it. A parent who wasn’t emotionally present. A home that didn’t feel safe. The people who were supposed to love you most, teaching you—without ever saying it out loud—that love can be fragile, conditional, or absent altogether.

I grew up carrying that silence inside me. The kind of silence that isn’t peaceful but heavy, like an echo that keeps returning no matter how many times you try to cover it up. And every time someone left—whether it was a breakup, a betrayal, or just someone who couldn’t meet me where I was—the silence grew louder.

The Weight of the Trust Wound

Being the girl no one stayed for creates what I now know is called a trust wound. But at the time, all I knew was that people left, and I was the common denominator. My heart learned to expect abandonment the way some people expect the sun to rise.

I began to believe love was temporary. That closeness was dangerous. That anyone who promised “forever” really meant “for now.”

So I became guarded. Independent to the point of isolation. I smiled brightly on the outside while inside, I was rehearsing for the day someone would leave. That way, maybe it wouldn’t hurt as much when they did.

But the truth is—it always hurt.

It hurt to pour my love into someone and feel them slowly slip away. It hurt to be the friend who gave everything, only to be replaced. It hurt to realize that no matter how good I was, how careful I was, how much I tried to earn love—it was never enough to make anyone stay.

The Inner Child Still Waiting

Deep down, the one who hurt most wasn’t the adult version of me. It was the little girl inside—the child who once believed love should mean safety. She was still waiting at the window, still listening for footsteps, still hoping someone would choose her.

And because she never got what she needed, she kept showing up in my relationships. Every time I was abandoned, it wasn’t just the woman I am now who felt the sting—it was her. The small, tender version of me who had been waiting for years for someone to stay.

For so long, I ignored her. I told myself to toughen up, to move on, to stop needing so much. I wore my independence like armor. But inside, the little girl’s voice never stopped crying out: Don’t leave me. Please, just stay.

Healing Begins with Staying