The Night I Thought He Would Propose, He Played a Joke Instead, So I Gave Him One Back!

For three years, I had been shrinking myself to fit into the spaces Ryan left for me. I had been accepting “jokes” that were actually insults and “support” that was actually control. I had been waiting for him to propose a future to me, never realizing that I held the power to propose a future to myself.

Ryan never called to apologize, and I never reached out to bridge the gap. He stayed in his world of manifestation and mockery, and I stepped into a world of reality and self-respect. Losing him didn’t feel like a tragedy; it felt like an eviction of a ghost that had been haunting my potential.

That night, I didn’t get a proposal from a man, but I made a commitment to a woman—the one staring back at me in the mirror. I promised her that she would never again be the punchline of someone else’s cruel joke. I said “yes” to my own worth, and for the first time in my life, I knew the engagement would last forever.