When My Protector Became My Pain — and I Became My Own Peace
When Your Protector Turns Into the One Who Wounds You
When Your Protector Turns Into the One Who Wounds You
When Your Protector Turns Into the One Who Wounds You
What do you do when the person you trusted the most—the one who knew your soul inside out, who promised to always have your back—turns out to be the one holding the knife?
I’m not talking about a stranger.
I’m talking about him—my best friend.
My brother in everything but blood.
My confidant.
The one person I believed would never turn on me.
He wasn’t just close.
He was family.
He saw the broken parts of me and swore he’d protect them.
He stood beside me in my darkest moments… until he became the reason for my darkness.
That betrayal? It’s a different kind of pain.
It’s not just heartbreak.
It’s the collapse of trust.
It’s realizing that the one who helped you heal is now the one you're healing from.
It’s asking: How didn’t I see it? How could he do this to me—of all people?
The aftermath is brutal:
- Sleepless nights, replaying everything you thought was real.
- Overthinking, questioning your memories and your worth.
- Silence, where there used to be loyalty and laughter.
He didn’t just walk away.
He left a void.
And in that void lives confusion, hurt, and unanswered questions.
The world keeps turning.
People expect you to "move on."
But they didn’t live in the space between you and him.
They didn’t see the promises.
They don’t know what it’s like when he, of all people, becomes a stranger.
So how do you heal from that?
You start by telling the truth.
Even when it shakes everything.
Even when it hurts more than silence.
You stop protecting the one who broke you.
You stop rewriting the story to make it easier for others to understand.
You stop blaming yourself for loving someone who chose to betray that love.
Instead, you begin again—with you.
Rick Rift was born out of this pain.
Not as a brand, but as a reckoning.
A survival. A return to voice.
This space is for everyone who’s been stabbed by someone they thought was safe.
For those who’ve been silenced, dismissed, or made to feel crazy for feeling deeply.
For those who lost not just a friend—but a piece of themselves.
If this is your story too, hear me:
- You’re not soft for grieving him.
- You’re not broken for trusting him.
- You’re not weak for missing him.
But you are strong—for choosing to heal without him.
For rising. For speaking. For reclaiming your truth.
Because the one who shattered you doesn’t get to write your ending.
You do.
🖤Rick
After the Fall — How I Started Healing Without Him
When Your Protector Turns Into the One Who Wounds You
When Your Protector Turns Into the One Who Wounds You
I spent a long time trying to understand why.
Why he did what he did.
Why he turned his back on me.
Why the one person I trusted to protect my heart ended up being the one who broke it.
I thought closure would save me.
I thought maybe if I had all the answers, I’d finally stop hurting.
But here’s the truth nobody tells you:
Healing doesn’t come from answers.
It comes from acceptance.
Acceptance that sometimes you’ll never know why.
Acceptance that the apology may never come.
Acceptance that someone can love you, and still choose to hurt you.
That’s when the shift started.
Not overnight.
Not clean.
But real.
I stopped begging for clarity from someone who gave me chaos.
I stopped chasing peace from someone who only knew how to break things.
And I started choosing myself.
At first, choosing me felt uncomfortable.
Like betrayal.
Like giving up on a friendship I swore was unbreakable.
But the truth?
He gave up on me first.
I just took longer to realize it.
So I stopped rewriting the story to make him the hero.
I stopped lowering my standards to match his silence.
And I let myself grieve. Fully. Loudly. Honestly.
Because healing is not pretending you’re fine.
Healing is crying in the shower.
It’s staring at your phone and forcing yourself not to text him.
It’s deleting the screenshots, the voice notes, the photos.
It’s rebuilding your worth in the aftermath of someone who made you question it.
And one day—quietly, unexpectedly—you wake up and realize you don’t miss him the way you used to.
You miss the memory, not the man.
You miss the bond, not the betrayal.
You realize that protecting your peace is more important than protecting the past.
If you’re in that space right now… I see you.
You don’t have to heal perfectly.
You don’t have to be strong every day.
You just have to keep choosing you—until it feels like home again.
This is not the end of your story.
It’s the beginning of you rising.
🖤 Rick
We don’t run from pain. We write through it.