Little things can make a huge difference, and you may never know

I'm still so overwhelmed, where to begin...

Roughly 7ish years ago I signed my pets up for a "pet health plan" at my local vet clinic. In doing so, I had to put down emergency contact info for myself and one other person in case I couldn't be reached. At the time I had just moved in with my (now ex) boyfriend, we'll call him Z, so I put him as my backup emergency contact.

To make a really long story somewhat sorter, Z became incredibly manipulative and abusive shortly after we moved in together, mostly because he couldn't hide it from me anymore. Years and dozens of breakups later, I move away and finally got just far enough out of his grasp- he didn't have so much power anymore.

Now, because of all of this, I tried to change my pets' emergency backup number at our vet's office for numerous reasons: 1. I didn't want them calling him for any reason ever and 2. Every time I would check my pets into the vet's office, I'd have to confirm who I was: covermeincheese or Z. Every time I'd see Z's name pop up, which was a LOT in 7 years with two doggos and a cat, I'd be reminded of the years I was abused and under his control. For some reason, though, every time I asked the receptionist to change my backup emergency contact they would take my updated contact's info and do ??? with it because it remained Z for, as I said, 7ish years.

Flash forward to today. I'm at the vet (surprisingly they have a location near my new home too, so we're still on this pet health plan) and I go to check my dog in for some tests. Now, I had totally forgotten that I asked the lady at the new office about updating my backup contact info while I was in there a few weeks ago until today, when my super supportive, amazing, gentle, and loving fiancée's name popped up instead of Z's.

I had to hold back tears. I wanted to hug her and tell her how thankful I was but I didn't want to unload such a story on her and just thanking her out of nowhere seemed so out of place for some reason (my head was spinning so in the moment, only later did I realize it probably wouldn't have been that awkward).

My point is, this simple act of updating my info means more to me than this receptionist will ever know. It was the last piece of him left in my life, and now it's gone, replaced with someone who literally radiates joy.

You never how anything, no matter how trivial or mundane, will impact someone.