Have you ever loved someone to the point that you settle for the crumbs that they can offer? Sometimes you ignore the fact that you’re settling for less than the minimum because you’d rather hold on to that than hold nothing. It became normal, we risk and do things just for the sake of love. I cannot blame you, when we love someone, we became irrational, we justify their behaviors just to make ourselves believe that it’s for the better even when it’s not.
Do you remember yourself crying each day because everything is too much but you can’t let go? Like holding a rose full of thorns, you’d rather handle the pain because you’re scared that once you let go of the rose, it will just start to bleed—you make it tolerable. But what we don’t understand is it’s slowly draining us, our energy, love, hope, and everything. You still believe that one day everything will fall in right place yet from time to time, you’re losing yourself in the process of trying to keep them. It creates issues within yourself, you negatively react to everything, always blaming mistakes on yourself, and you slowly lose your self-esteem because the only thing you care about is them and how they see you—darling, it’s slowly killing you.
I remember settling into something I hope for, it took me years to understand that no amount of love and effort can make him do the things I asked for. I gave everything I have and even the things I don’t have, I gave every piece of me because he’s lost. All I wanted is to make him feel loved and appreciated until I got nothing left but pain, and suffering that he didn’t know because he’ll get angry when every time I’m talking about how I feel. I stayed longer than I should have and when the time comes that he chooses someone else over me, I fought us one last time but he already made up his mind and there’s this kind of thing that you will suddenly that you had enough, that it’s time to accept things the way they are.
Yet we tend to still fight for it, to wait, to hope for something that isn’t coming back anymore, and maybe that’s because what we feel about them is genuine. I understand that acceptance isn’t a one-day process, it will take you months and even years to get over something but I hope that you understand that sometimes choosing yourself is better than fighting for something that doesn’t want to be kept. We choose the love we think we deserve; we choose based on how we feel towards the person, and we ignore every red flag we saw in them because love became blind—hoping and searching for something good in them. Once, twice, thrice, or even how many times you want to forgive and get back to that person hoping they will change and become the person you hope them to be. To be good as you, to care about how you feel, or to love you how much you love them but darling you cannot force things and feelings. Do you know what hurts more about this? That one day, they will do the things you ask them to do to other people and it’s not your fault because you have stayed longer than you should have. You give everything even if they don’t ask for it, it’s not your fault if they don’t choose you.
Tags: settling for less, self-worth, personal growth, professional development, self-improvement, relationships, emotional impact, LifeThinker.
