After months of trying to stay afloat in the relationship, I finally decided to end it. I had been miserable for so long, drowning in sadness I couldn’t seem to escape. My partner didn’t know how to deal with my pain, and honestly, I couldn’t blame him — even I didn’t know how to handle it myself. Somewhere along the way, I became selfish. Everything revolved around my pain. Every action, every word, I justified by how much I was hurting. I didn’t care how anyone else felt; all I cared about was numbing the ache that lived inside me. And I knew everyone around me was feeling it with me, but not for me.

One day my partner looked at me and said, “I really don’t know how to ease your pain, but you know this is happening to me too”. It was only then when I realized that he is right, if he was my partner and I couldn’t have kids, then this was happening to him too, he would also not have children. All this while I didn’t realize he was just as entitled to his own feelings about it. When I asked him how that made him feel, he said it only hurt him to see me hurt. He told me not to worry about him, that if we couldn’t have kids, he would be okay with that. But my mind stick to the fact that it was happening to him as well.

I felt what I felt and one friend called me selfish for leaving him, for not letting him be by my side and selfishly experience this pain all by myself. For also not being there for him as that was happening to him too, for simply not sharing this pain with each other an going through it together. And maybe she was right, maybe I was selfish, but feeling what I felt, I wouldn’t wish that pain on anyone else and in my mind this was happening to me alone. It was only happening to him because he was with me, if I took myself out of the equation, it wouldn’t be happening to him at all, because without me, he could still procreate.

There is a thin line between being selfish and being selfless. Looking back, I realize that how I presented myself then was selfish, and my version of selflessness was just an excuse for it. But I don’t regret my decision to end the relationship. At that time, it was the only thing I could bear. Moving forward alone was all I could handle, caring for my own wound was all I could manage. I was only just learning how to soothe myself, I was in no position to care for anyone else. So call it selfish if you want, but to me it was selfishly selfless.