The Identity Tax

The Identity Tax

There is a kind of abuse that doesn’t bruise the skin — it bruises the truth. It rewires memories. It twists reality. It teaches you to mistrust your own eyes, your own instincts, your own story. This is the identity tax: the psychological cost of being partnered with someone who needed you confused in order to feel powerful.

Over time, you lost track of who you were. Not because you were fragile, but because their voice became louder than your own. You began carrying doubts you didn’t create. You believed stories about yourself that weren’t true. You shrank in places where you were once expansive. The goal was never love — the goal was ownership.

But identity never disappears. It retreats. It waits. It hides beneath the debris of survival until the moment safety returns. And when you finally step out, your real self steps with you — bruised, yes, but unbroken.

Your job now isn’t to become someone new; it’s to remember who you were before someone convinced you to forget.

Stay powerful.