Love is an incredible, overwhelming, and entrancing feeling yet we chase after it all the time. I spent the last two years in love. Well, I believed to be love. I do not regret it because I learned so much from him. But I believe that the largest life lesson of that relationship is that I learned how to love myself.
In some relationships, we have so gravitated to the possibility of someone else loving us that we turn away from the red flags that are so clearly in front of us.
He can say he misses you, that he wants you back. But that does not erase the look on his face. He can say it’ll be different but you won’t really know.
I took him back. Many times, when I honestly should not have. It was not until I truly realized that I deserved so much more than when the opportunity to take him back came again, I actually said no. Not ‘oh maybe’ or ‘I’ll think about it’ it was simply ‘no’. It sounded definite and that is what it was. I closed the door. Rather than him deciding he no longer wanted me and I was waiting around for him to pick me up again, I decided that I no longer wanted to be picked up again.
He destroyed me. My hopes, my love, and warmth had left my eyes that day. But I will not give him that power anymore. I forgive him for what he has done to me but I will never forget. It is now a part of me and has allowed me to look at the world through different eyes.
I realized that while I was going through this cycle with him, I was not available for the love I truly wanted.
There was this saying that I heard a while ago that stuck in my head for a while. It was, “Do not let your boyfriends get in the way of your husband”. Now looking at it, I have come to the thought that I should not let anyone come in the way of me truly feeling the love.
I am not afraid to be alone. He is. That’s why he kept me. I am not that person anymore. I am strong. I am amazing. And I am someone who chooses herself over the possibility of a man to love me correctly when he failed it multiple times.
There are still days I want to reach out to him. Days where I think of the ‘what ifs’ but I remind myself that I choose myself. I choose my own certain happiness over the possibility of shared happiness.
