CRASH OUT: People Pleasing Didn’t Buy Me Peace. It Cost Me Myself.

CRASH OUT: DAY 365

People pleasing didn’t buy me peace. It cost me myself.

Today is 365.

A year ago today, I left with my Jeep, Charlie in the back, and an overnight bag.

It was Sunday. I had a poetry gig and every intention of going back to what I thought was my forever home Monday morning.

On paper, there was no reason not to…

Except that week alone, I’d been told “I don’t really want to be with you” three times.

Let alone the reconciliation and breakup in August. Then every previous week in September.

I was exhausted.

I was also preparing for TEDx and producing the 10-year anniversary of Poetry vs. Hip-Hop. I still had roughly a third of a 15-minute TEDx talk to memorize. For context, I didn’t make it through the entire thing cleanly until dress rehearsal the day before.

My brain was full.

My heart was fuller.

My nervous system was done.

That Sunday, for the first time in two years, I was asked what I was going to do with Charlie.

I remember looking up like:

Oh.

Okay.

No problem.

She’s my responsibility.

I put Charlie in the Jeep. Packed an overnight bag. Hosted my gig.

Monday morning, I woke up at my friend’s house and heard something as clearly as I have ever heard anything:

“Go back for what?”

LOUD.

Cloud-booming.

The way people describe hearing the voice of God—it was exactly that.

I drove to Atlanta.

I didn’t have a plan.

That was on me.

A lot happened afterward because I left without a plan—and because I entered the relationship without one.

Some consequences had nothing to do with my ex. They were consequences of decisions I made while heartbroken, exhausted and trying to figure out what came next.

That’s part of Crash Out, too.

I told y’all I would eventually get to the song where I talked about my contribution to the breakup.

We’re here.

Except I need to establish something before we go any further:

TWO THINGS CAN BE TRUE AT ONCE.

I cannot say this enough.

Two things can be true at once.

All the time.

Every day.

Everywhere.

All at once.

There’s probably a reason somebody made an entire movie with essentially that title.

I can have behaved horribly in a moment and have been deeply hurt.

My ex can have loved me and done things that wounded me.

I can regret my behavior and refuse to accept responsibility for theirs.

I can miss somebody and know something was unhealthy.

I can respect their privacy and refuse to erase what happened to me.

None of those truths cancel the others.

That matters, because I don’t want Crash Out to become a confession where I conveniently leave you believing:

Sheba did something horrible. They did nothing. The end.

That isn’t the story.

Neither is:

They were horrible. I did nothing.

That isn’t the story either.

Life would be easier to write if it worked that way.

It doesn’t.

THREE WEEKS AFTER I LEFT, I WENT BACK.

I needed my hair done.

TEDx was coming. Poetry vs. Hip-Hop’s anniversary was coming. I hated my weave.

My philosophy was basically the runner’s rule:

Nothing new on race day.

I went back to the woman who had been braiding my hair for two years.

Around that time, I talked to my brother Micah.

That conversation left me believing my ex wanted to speak to me and possibly work things out.

Maybe something was miscommunicated.

Maybe somebody remembers the conversation differently.

Maybe I romanticized what I heard because it was what I desperately wanted to be true.

I cannot establish today exactly where that contradiction happened.

Hope can fill blank spaces with information nobody actually gave you.

After my appointment, I went home.

Home.

Not their house.

At that moment, it was still where I lived. My belongings were there. My address was there. I had my key. I had the garage-door opener.

I had left three weeks earlier with an overnight bag.

I arrived late Friday night, parked, walked inside and got into bed.

They woke up.

“What are you doing here?”

My smart-mouth answer was essentially:

Getting in bed.

They went back to sleep.

Saturday morning was different.

Now it was:

What are you doing here? You can’t just come here.

My response was equally clear:

I live here.

Then I learned they said they had never told Micah they wanted to talk to me.

I was devastated.

I cried.

I screamed.

I kept coming back to:

You didn’t even check to see if we were alive.

Their answer:

“Well, you left.”

My answer:

You broke up with me.

Then came a sentence I still remember:

They hadn’t expected me to leave like that.

That has stayed with me.

I had repeatedly heard that they didn’t want to be with me, yet somehow my actually leaving was unexpected.

My therapist helped me understand something later: when someone ends a relationship, you are allowed to leave.

That doesn’t mean the love disappears.

Obviously.

Here I am at 365.

THEN WE TRIED TO BE “FRIENDS.”

Yes.

That bullshit. 😂

Around TEDx and the Poetry vs. Hip-Hop anniversary, we started spending time together again.

I invited them to both events. I was even honoring them at the anniversary.

They asked whether I was seeing anyone.

I wasn’t.

Someone had expressed interest in me, though.

When I mentioned that, the reaction was immediate:

What?!

I remember thinking:

Wait. You broke up with me.

They told me they weren’t seeing anybody either.

Then came the proposal:

Maybe we should be friends.

Their reasoning was that we had never really built a friendship underneath the romance.

Fair enough.

We tried that bullshit for about a month.

Turns out taking two people who have been deeply in love and renaming the relationship “friendship” doesn’t magically remove attachment, jealousy, expectations, history or hurt.

Who knew?

There were arguments.

Hang-ups.

Canceled meetups.

Letters.

One particularly heartbreaking email from me received essentially a two-line response.

The same day, the Recording Academy contacted me about participating in a documentary.

I remember thinking:

Keep showing up for your own life.

Even when your heart is falling apart.

Doors can still open.

THEN SOMETHING CHANGED.

Black Friday, I signed the lease on my basement loft.

That Sunday, my ex and I got on FaceTime to figure out what belongings would be sent to me.

Instead, we both ended up crying.

That matters.

They offered reconciliation.

I want to repeat that because chronology matters.

They had been the one who proposed friendship.

Now they were asking to reconcile.

They talked about therapy.

They offered access through their medical insurance so we could get help together.

We talked about me eventually coming back home—but this time, with a plan.

The timing almost felt cruel.

I had literally just signed my lease.

They had just signed a new work contract that would bring them back and forth to Atlanta.

I remember thinking:

Damn. The timing is off again. Is this a warning?

It was off by essentially a day.

Still, we chose each other again.

THEN WE HAD A BEAUTIFUL MONTH.

I don't want heartbreak to erase this part.

We were happy.

We called the apartment hunter again.

We started looking at luxury apartments again.

We traveled.

We went to New York.

We had beautiful outings.

We laughed.

I read them a love poem.

We seemed to be falling in love again—not with some fantasy version of what we had been, but with us, freshly.

A new beginning.

It actually sucks that I can’t fill this blog with the pictures.

Because they’re beautiful.

The happiness was real.

The romance was real.

The love was real.

We spent Christmas together at home.

Even Charlie took her first plane ride.

Then we all piled into the family car and drove South together for New Year’s.

We talked about the future.

We talked about therapy.

We talked about what we now understood about me that we hadn’t understood before.

There is something personal about the way my brain and nervous system work that I’m not ready to make public yet.

For purposes of this essay, I’m going to call it a “social disorder.”

It isn’t actually a disorder.

I’m deliberately using an imperfect phrase because I’m not ready to name the actual thing publicly.

If you know, you know.

If you don’t, you will someday when I’m ready.

At that point, though, they knew.

There were no hidden cards.

They knew about my finances.

My fears.

My ruptures.

My life.

Menopause.

My uncertainty about my career.

My basement loft.

The fact that I was trying to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up at fifty-something years old.

Everything.

They knew what could happen during a flare-up and that I had not yet learned all the coping tools because I hadn't known what I was dealing with before.

We had not selected our therapist yet because it was the holidays.

The plan was to do it the following week.

I asked:

What happens if I have another flare-up before then and respond badly?

The answer sounded loving:

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”

Okay.

Except the bridge came the next day.

I CRASHED OUT.

I did not handle it well.

I want that sentence to sit by itself.

I did not handle it well.

There was a traumatic event involving a building that had already affected me deeply.

At the same time, a work situation escalated and that trauma was used against me in a way that sent me spiraling further.

I went somewhere very dark.

I said things to my ex that apparently became deal breakers for them.

Some of what I said may have touched real issues.

A hit dog will holler.

That does not mean it was appropriate for me to say those things in the way, moment or emotional condition that I did.

Something can contain truth and still be delivered destructively.

That was my responsibility.

I apologized for what hurt them.

I own it.

I kept asking for co-regulation in the way I believed I needed it.

From my perspective, those requests were increasingly dismissed or unanswered.

The rupture got worse.

By roughly the fifth day, communication had essentially disappeared.

That disappearance made me panic more.

Again:

Two things can be true at once.

My behavior could hurt them.

Their withdrawal could hurt me.

Neither truth erases the other.

I BEGGED FOR ONE THERAPY SESSION.

Not a lifetime commitment.

Not even reconciliation at that point.

One session.

I wanted us to sit in a room with a professional and unpack what had just happened.

At the end of January, I finally received an answer:

They would have to ask their therapist whether going to one session with me was appropriate.

Monday at 1 p.m.

Monday came.

Three o’clock came.

Nothing.

I reached out.

They couldn’t talk.

Six o’clock came.

I sent one final message saying essentially:

I’m circling back until I’m no longer available.

They called.

The conversation lasted only a couple of minutes.

I asked:

What did your therapist say?

The voice on the other end felt completely different to me.

Cold.

Disconnected.

Gone.

Then:

“I can’t go to therapy with you, Sheba… I don’t even want to be in the same room with you.”

I didn't fight.

I asked one question:

Are you sure you want this to be the end of us knowing each other?

They started a sentence.

Stopped.

Started over.

“Yes.”

That restart is something I will probably remember if I live to be a thousand.

It sounded to me like they wanted to make absolutely certain there was no ambiguity.

Then:

“I don’t feel safe with you, and I no longer want to be in a relationship with you.”

I said:

Okay. I wish you all the best.

They wished me the best too.

We hung up.

That was it.

So I thought.

THREE MINUTES LATER.

I lost it in my car.

Screaming.

Crying into my steering wheel.

I let myself fall apart for a few minutes.

I called a friend who knew the entire story.

I was probably incoherent.

They simply asked:

“Do you want me to come over?”

No.

I just needed somebody to answer.

We hung up.

I looked at my phone.

Missed call from my ex. Three minutes ago.

I called back.

I was still crying.

I didn't care.

No more people pleasing.

I said:

I missed a call from you.

They said:

“Nah. It must have hit the button.”

It.

I remember that word.

Not I accidentally called.

Not my finger hit it.

It.

I paused for maybe .00000001 seconds.

I had thoughts about what that call might have meant.

I still don't know.

Maybe it really was accidental.

Maybe it wasn't.

Maybe they were sad.

Maybe they were confused.

Maybe they immediately regretted calling.

I don't know.

That is one of the things I have learned this year:

Stop turning uncertainty into certainty because one version hurts less.

I said okay.

We hung up.

THEN I BLOCKED THEM.

Not because I didn't want them to call.

God, no.

I blocked them because I wanted them to call too much.

I knew myself.

If their number remained open, every vibration could become hope.

Every morning:

Maybe today.

Every night:

Maybe tomorrow.

Blocking wasn't punishment.

It was protection from hope.

I blocked the obvious places.

Apparently I missed a few.

Months later, I discovered they had viewed my LinkedIn.

WhatsApp.

TikTok.

Six days after telling me they didn’t want to be in the same room with me, they contacted a mutual acquaintance to ask about my GRAMMY results—information that was publicly available.

I didn't even learn about that until months later.

I cannot tell you why they did any of those things.

I will not pretend I can read their mind.

I can tell you how it felt to me.

Confusing.

Because:

You don't want to be in my rooms, remember?

These are my rooms.

Eventually my therapist gave me a word for behavior like repeatedly watching an ex's digital life without re-entering the relationship:

orbiting.

That word helped.

It didn't make it hurt less.

HERE'S ANOTHER UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTH.

While I was blocking them from looking into my life…

some tiny mustard-seed-sized part of me was still hoping they'd find a way through.

Two things can be true at once.

I wanted privacy.

I wanted them to show up.

I wanted to heal.

I wanted my person back.

I wanted them to stop watching.

I wanted them to say something.

Human beings are wildly inconvenient that way.

I have not contacted them to interrupt their life.

I have not shown up.

I have respected the last answer I was given, even though I hated it.

A hard time accepting an ending emotionally is not the same thing as refusing to respect it behaviorally.

That distinction matters to me.

THEN THERE WERE MY THINGS.

My entire life didn't magically leave that house because I did.

Remember:

I originally left with an overnight bag.

During an earlier conversation, I had been explicitly told that if I came back, police would be called and things would be worse for me.

As a Black woman, hearing someone I loved invoke the police against me landed in a particular way.

I also knew my driver's license, car information and a lifetime of belongings were connected to the home I was being told not to enter.

Could I have fought about my legal right to retrieve my property?

Maybe.

I had no fight left.

After the GRAMMYs, on March 3, I emailed asking for my belongings.

I asked again in April.

In May—roughly five months later—I finally received part of them.

Clothes.

Shoes.

Bras.

Underwear.

Everyday things you don't realize you're going to have to replace until suddenly Target is getting your money every other day because your life is somewhere else.

Some things were still missing.

People can reasonably ask:

Why didn't you just hire movers?

Because I couldn't afford to.

That's the answer.

I am not embarrassed by it.

I also wasn't comfortable sending strangers through a home to determine what belonged to me when I couldn't be there to pack my own life.

I eventually sent one final email listing things I knew were missing and asked whether I could have them by May 31.

That date meant something to me.

I received a response saying they couldn't promise that.

After five months, something in me finally said:

Keep it.

I blocked email too.

Not because the things didn't matter.

Because eventually getting free mattered more.

Today I live in about 700 square feet.

Half of it probably wouldn't fit in here anyway.

Life has a sense of humor.

PRIVACY IS NOT ERASURE.

There are parts of this story I will not tell.

Not because they didn't happen.

Not because they aren't relevant.

Some private information would provide context for hours of behavior that may make very little sense from the outside.

I know those details.

I also know they were shared privately.

I have decided to respect that.

That means sometimes I may look worse because I refuse to fill every blank with information that isn't mine to publish.

I can live with that.

Accountability isn't revealing every secret you know so strangers will agree with your side.

There is another reason this matters so much to me.

When my ex-ex passed away, a documentary was made about her life.

Six or seven years of us knowing one another essentially disappeared.

That hurt.

Not simply because I was erased.

Erasing me erased part of her.

I won't do that here.

My ex was a massive part of my life.

There was love.

There was laughter.

There were plans.

There were beautiful trips.

There was family.

There was pain.

There were things they did that hurt me.

There were things I did that hurt them.

There were things we got beautifully right.

I refuse to rewrite history because I'm heartbroken.

I also refuse to disclose everything I know simply because revealing it might make me look better.

Some things belong to me.

Some belong to them.

Some belong in therapy.

Some belong only to me, them and God.

There will be blanks in this story.

That is intentional.

I can tell the truth about my life without telling every truth I know about theirs.

Privacy is not erasure.

PEOPLE PLEASING DIDN'T BUY ME PEACE.

This may be the biggest thing Crash Out taught me about myself.

I was a people pleaser for years and didn't know it.

I called it being amenable.

Cooperative.

Flexible.

Easy to get along with.

I thought compromise automatically meant maturity.

Then I looked at this relationship.

Then I looked backward at others.

I saw it.

The more I abandoned myself trying to preserve peace, the less respected I often felt.

People pleasing didn't buy me peace. It cost me myself.

I cannot blame another person for every time I ignored my instincts.

Sometimes I was given information and negotiated against it.

Sometimes reality hurt, so I romanticized another interpretation.

Sometimes I believed what I desperately wanted to be true.

Sometimes I stayed because I loved them.

Sometimes I stayed because I loved the future we kept describing.

Those aren't the same thing.

My brother Micah once gave me language that helped:

“You did not get yourself into this. They 100% helped to fuck you up. But it is your responsibility to get yourself out.”

That sentence lets two things be true.

I do not have to pretend another person's actions had no effect on me in order to take responsibility for healing.

Their responsibility is theirs.

Mine is getting myself out.

THE MATH STILL DOESN'T MATH.

This is the part my literal brain struggles with.

We reconciled.

We talked about therapy.

We planned a home.

We traveled.

We spent Christmas together.

We drove South together for New Year's.

We talked about our future.

Then came another engagement promise.

The third in two and a half years.

Then I saw the ring.

Not metaphorically.

There was a FaceTime from the ring store.

There was video.

There was a hand.

There was an actual physical ring.

I was asked to hold Valentine's Day.

Then we went from that…

to never speaking again.

My brain still goes:

Wait. I thought you said…

I thought we were rebuilding.

I thought we were getting help.

I thought we had a plan.

I thought we were doing this together.

What happened to the together part?

Going from an engagement ring literally being held in someone's hand to never speaking again?

That math wasn't mathing from the beginning.

There was a hairline fracture in the foundation.

Maybe I couldn't see it.

Maybe I didn't want to.

ACCOUNTABILITY DOESN'T REQUIRE SELF-ABANDONMENT.

I hurt somebody I loved.

I apologized.

I own that.

I have replayed where I could have been quieter.

Slower.

Less reactive.

Less afraid.

I have examined where hurt became behavior.

Where fear became reaction.

Where wanting clarification became chasing clarification.

Where my nervous system took over.

I own all of it.

Two things can be true at once.

I can take responsibility for my mistakes without accepting responsibility for theirs.

I can understand why someone needed distance and still be devastated by how that distance happened.

I can acknowledge that my behavior hurt someone and still acknowledge the months of instability that preceded it.

I can respect their final boundary and still grieve the promises that came before it.

Accountability doesn't require self-abandonment.

Regret doesn't require lifelong punishment.

Clearly, though—

a year isn't enough.

DAY 365.

Today I took myself to my favorite restaurant.

Not because I'm healed.

I'm not.

Not because I don't love them.

I do.

Not because I've reached some enlightened place where I understand everything.

Please.

Today wasn't a victory lap.

It was an acknowledgment:

I made it here.

Writing this has made me sad.

Actually, writing this made me spiral a little.

That's true too.

I'm going to finish this, close my laptop, curl up with Charlie and find some television with really good dialogue because sometimes healing also looks like not processing one more damn thing tonight.

I have spent a year trying to understand what happened.

Maybe I won't ever understand all of it.

I know what I'm taking with me.

There is no more people pleasing.

There is no more Big Love at the expense of myself.

If you want that chapter, listen to “Take Me As I Am.”

I want to believe myself.

Listen when my instincts speak.

Stop confusing being amenable with disappearing inside somebody else's needs.

Stop bargaining against myself because I'm terrified of an outcome.

Be true to myself even when I don't like the outcome.

Even if you don't like the outcome.

I cannot control whether somebody stays.

I cannot control what they tell themselves about me.

I cannot control whether they ever understand my side.

I cannot control whether they ever come back.

I can control whether I stay with me.

Sometimes you crash out.

Sometimes the smoke takes a very long time to clear.

Maybe healing isn't becoming someone who never crashes again.

Maybe it's finally understanding what caught fire.

Today is 365.

I'm still here.

I'm still grieving.

I'm still accountable.

I'm still capable of saying they hurt me too.

I'm still protecting what was private.

I'm still refusing to erase what was beautiful.

I'm still learning.

All of those things can be true at once.

🎧 CRASH OUT

From A TOXIC LOVE

Queen Sheba × Chanté Moore × Lil Ronnie

🏆 For your GRAMMY consideration in the Spoken Word Poetry category.

First Round Voting: October 12–22, 2026

🌹 LOS ANGELES — OCTOBER 12

Queen Sheba live at The Sun Rose

HOME TEAM ♥️

@beats4thestars @thequeensheba

@iamchantemoore

@princeofengineers @ritakaydavis

@soundbyrod @slikkmuzik @1980sixx @kjlattimore @columbiasoundmastering

#AToxicLoveTheAlbum #FYC #Poetry #SpokenWord #GRAMMYNominated

A TOXIC LOVE
Queen Sheba × Chanté Moore × Lil Ronnie

For Your GRAMMY® Consideration
Spoken Word Poetry

🎧 LISTEN TO THE ALBUM →
https://Venice.lnk.to/a-toxic-love