You don't have to earn the right to leave

How chronic self-reflection keeps you in places that hurt you.

Originally published in my Substack: First Draft Thoughts with RV Mendoza.

I’ve stayed too long in too many places.

I stayed for the sake of “growth”.

I stayed and called it “seeing it from all sides”.

I stayed and called it “love”.

For most of my life, if something felt wrong, I assumed it was me.

bell hooks writes that children (if they’re lucky) depend on a few well meaning adults to survive. They have very little control over their lives.

If they fully understood their predicament, it would be absolutely terrifying.

They can’t afford to see their caregivers as unsafe. That realization would shatter their world.

So the child makes themselves the problem instead.

There’s an unbearable terror in having no control.

When I was a kid, if something bad happened, it must be because I caused it.

Self blame wasmy survival strategy.

As with many things, this strategy follows me into adulthood.

If a relationship felt off, I audit myself. If a job drains me, I optimize and beg. If someone crossed a line, I ask how I can communicate better.

I stay long enough to prove I have exhausted every possible flaw in me.

I grew up in an immigrant family trying to make it in America. Being good mattered. Being impressive mattered. Being well adjusted mattered.

At Filipino parties, I performed competence. In classrooms, in friendships, in rooms full of adults, I learned how to read the air and adjust.

That adjustment became a skill. It made me perceptive. It made me competent. It made me good in rooms.

It also made me stay.

Stay in conversations that drained me.

Stay in dynamics that abused me.

Stay long enough to prove to myself that I had done everything I possibly could.

I started confusing over-functioning with integrity.

Self reflection still matters of course. There are things that are mine to own.

But constantly turning discomfort into a self improvement project keeps you in places that hurt you.

I don’t think I need to do that anymore.

Maybe I can start trusting the first signals.

Incompatibility is enough. A bad fit could simply be a bad fit.

Sometimes, nothing is wrong with me.

It’s imperative I become someone who no longer has to earn the right to leave.