BTL Episode 2 - How do I break free?

“I am no longer the same person I was a few years ago, but my surroundings still treat me as if I were. How do I break free?"

Dear J.V.,

You say you have changed, yet a part of your world around you refuses to acknowledge it. While you drift forward, their voices call you back to a version of yourself that no longer fits.

This is the strange inertia of human relationships. While we evolve, others hold us in place—not always out of malice, but often out of a quiet, unconscious need. For some, seeing you unchanged is a form of stability. If you remain who you were, they do not have to renegotiate their own place in the world. Your transformation, however subtle, can be unsettling to those who have not undergone their own shift. And so, they hold on to their version of you, as if protecting something - perhaps themselves, perhaps the fragile balance of the relationship as they know it.

But here is a possible question worth asking: must they change their view of you for you to fully inhabit who you are now?

There are those whose perception of you is no longer a fit, whose expectations feel like chains, whose presence keeps pulling you back into a shape you have outgrown. And perhaps it is time to loosen your grip on those connections, to allow distance where it is needed.

And then, there are those who see you as they always have, and yet you choose to keep them close - not because they understand every nuance of your transformation, but because their presence carries a different kind of weight. Love, history, something that transcends the need for recognition. With these people, you do not need to prove who you are. You simply exist, holding both your past and present self without contradiction.

So maybe it is not about breaking free, but about choosing where you stand. You can decide which ties to loosen, which to tighten. You can be both the person you were and the one you are becoming.

And, in the quiet knowledge that your evolution is yours to claim, you may find that you are already free.

With a resonating feeling to your question,

André