We say it’s noble and brave and romantic to care more, that at least we are attuned with our emotions and what we want — but most of all, we want to be loved back. It’s crushing to realize that it might be in their ability to love us the way we want them to, but they never were obligated to in the first place. And we — not they — are the ones who led ourselves on, thinking that maybe they’d change their hearts and their minds. And we know — oh, do we know — that the first step in attracting the love you deserve is to love yourself that much and more, that you reap what you sow, that you can’t expect anyone to love you if you don’t love yourself… whatever the aphorism, we might as well have it tattooed on our hearts and in our hands, along with all the overeager text messages we never sent to the people who almost loved us, the people who kept us around, the people who we couldn’t convince to care just that much more. We mutter that they’ll miss us when we’re gone, that they’ll never appreciate what they had — and maybe that’s true, but to harbor resentment is just as exhausting as loving someone who will not love you back, and in either case, you just wind up exhausted and on the side of the road, all out of your own steam. We try to understand why this — with all its faults and coming-up-shorts and being left wanting more — is the love we choose. We think that maybe we’re not ready for something real, so we hang onto something less-than. We tell ourselves it’s training wheels, an introductory stage into real love — but also wonder if this is the best we’ll ever get, if this is the most we deserve. This is the answer we want so desperately to believe: that this the reality we’ve chosen for now, that this pain is within our control to change. We wonder if we ought to just give in, and so we gather up the scraps in hopes that they equal out enough love that satisfies us for tonight, for the month, for however long it takes to come to peace with the fact that sometimes, holding out for the kind of love that loves you back is cold and lonely and quiet and slow, but if we don’t hold onto the idea that it is out there, somewhere, waiting for us to latch on and love them back, then what do we cling to? What do we hope for? Maybe we’re only ever just hoping for a little more hope, a little more reason to keep going, another little sign that they might care, that all of this effort and love and affection was not in vain. - EC
Posted on: Mon, 06 Oct 2014 05:14:47 +0000
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