When love won't love you back

 I remember being so hurt, so butt hurt that this one boy didn’t want to pursue a relationship with me. After so many years of liking him, so many times I tried to show him how much I cared for him, he still didn’t want me. I was livid. How dare he not want me? How dare he choose not to be with me? I remember how that conversation went so clearly… I had drunk texted him, for probably the 4^th or 5^th time that semester and this time I made sure to spare no details. One, because alcohol and two, because I was so frustrated, it had been 7 years and I still liked one person. 7 years. Honestly, I was at my wits end, I didn’t get it. I didn’t get why I liked him, and I had tried. I tried to get over him, it wasn’t working and so I told him. I remember saying “I don’t know what you’ve done to me”. It was probably the first and last time I sounded desperate; I don’t plead but that night I almost did. When he finally got back to me, he essentially said, I love you but not in that way, he said I feel the same way, but I’m not in the right place rn. And my gosh did it hurt, again because how dare he not love me but it hurt most because I wondered what was wrong with me. Why I wasn’t enough for him, if I wasn’t short enough, petite enough, hell even pretty enough for him. I can’t lie, I hated him for it. Absolutely did. But he had done nothing wrong.

Now its two years later and I get it. From the depth of my heart, I get it and most of all I am thankful, I don’t know whether to him or the universe that didn’t go the way I wanted it to. I would have ruined it. I know that’s counter intuitive but knowing what I know right now, it wouldn’t have worked out. It couldn’t and I know I would have never forgiven myself if I blew it with that one. You see, when childhood trauma mixes with anxiety and a spice of attachment issues, things don’t work out. Its even worse when you aren’t aware of it, when you aren’t aware of these things and how they in fluence how you behave or don’t behave, what bearings these things have on the person that you are in relationships. You just end up leaving a trail of heartbreak and disappointment behind you, something you know all too well to be inflicting on others. In a weird way I’m grateful for how things turned out.

My own past relationship put this into perspective so clearly. You see I had to make a choice, to either love this beautiful human with my everything or to let them go. The universe put me into the other guy’s shoes and said here you go. I had to be the one who chose to love from a distance because I knew I wasn’t right for this awesome person. And maybe to him and his friends I am the worst they have ever met, I’m the villain, but that’s one of the most selfless things I have ever done. I am no saint. But I know for sure that it could have been worse had I not taken that decision. And did it hurt?? Of course, it did, like death with by a thousand paper cuts. But you win some and you lose some. I lost this one but I have stopped regretting the loss.

I won’t ever really know whether that boy was being honest when he said he wasn’t ready to commit to a relationship but I do know I learnt something, took me a while but I did. I learnt that it’s okay for people not to accept your love, you are not entitled to it. It’s okay to reject a love that is not right or that no longer feels right for you. No matter how hard it is. I can only dream that I will be graceful if I ever have to be on the receiving end again, that I’ll remember that its not a right to be loved by that specific person, that its only a pleasure and an honour to be loved right back by the people who mean the world to me. And to the boys, all I can say is thank you. It was a pleasure loving you.

 

 

 

Thank you for 1k overall reads, I can not express how much this means to me. I love you.