When all the doors between you and me had closed and all our bridges had burnt, I wished that I had never met you. I wished that I could get back all the time and love I gave you. It hurt me to think of you, and even now, sometimes when I am at my lowest, it still does. I went through endless cycles of guilt and self loathing. I used to ask myself, why did it end? Did I hurt you? Did you hate me? Should I have had tried to make it work? All this doubt shrouded every waking moment of my life.
Now though, I have come to love myself. There is this beautiful feeling that comes with loving yourself that I find hard to express because there is no fixed way to express it. But, I want to give it a try, for you. Most of our problems stem from insecurities and those insecurities hold us back. They hold us back from realizing our worth and our potential, they weigh us down with all these insignificant things that won’t even matter in a few days or months or years. But once we come to love ourselves those insecurities fall away like dust and oh how beautiful is that feeling. I feel liberated, lighter, happier, guilt-free.
I have spent so much time after we both went our separate ways, blaming myself for not being good enough to keep you. Do you remember that time I cried when your friends told you I wasn’t good enough for you? I do. Every second of that day is etched into my memory like carvings in stone. You never told me they were wrong; you just told me that it didn’t matter, that it was irrelevant.
And, like the stupid lovestruck girl that I was, I believed you. I swallowed your words like I would water. I reassured myself that even though I wasn’t good enough, it didn’t matter because you said so. But, I was good enough; oh how could I be so stupid as to think I wasn’t. Hell, I was more than good enough. That was one, stupid little insecurity of mine that you fed. I now know my worth.
I think about all the things I did for you and all the things that I would have been willing to do for you and it hurts to know that you wouldn’t have even done half of them. I have always wanted to know why you didn’t think I was worthy. It’s one of the things that still haunts sometimes. What was it that stopped you from loving me like I loved you?
With learning to love myself, I have also learned to look back at my life and all the memories and see them not as something to regret but something that made me into the strong person I am today. And, for that; I want to thank you.
I want to thank you for showing me that loving someone does not necessarily mean that they will love you back or that they’ll even return a quarter of the love you give them. I want to thank you for showing me that with time people you love can become absolute strangers and how to deal with that. I want to thank you for teaching me that I need to stand up for myself, that no one has the right to treat me however they want to.
I want to thank you for making me realize that no one gets to treat me like a second choice. I want to thank you for making me realize that love is so much more than spending time with someone or listening to them vent. But, most of all, I want to thank you for making me want to love myself again.
I don’t think I would have ever felt as good about myself as I do now, if you hadn’t broken my heart. You made me realize my worth and it is so much more than what you made it out to be. It’s only because of you that I won’t settle for just anybody anymore. I will get the love that I deserve and not the love that people think I am worth.
To anyone who read this, if ever there is somebody in your life who makes you feel like you are undeserving of their love or that you are hard to love, just know one thing: they don’t love you enough. People who make you feel that way either don’t love you enough or they don’t know how to love. And you don’t need to stay with people like that.
They won’t do you any good. They can’t give you the love you deserve so why suffer and sacrifice yourself? When they are done ruining and wrecking your life, they will leave. They will walk out and you’ll be left to collect the pieces and put yourself together again. I want you to know that you have to walk out before it is too late, and I want you to know that you have to learn to love yourself.
Love yourself so that you don’t need someone else to do it for you, so that you can be fine on your own. Love yourself so that you can be a strong, amazing person who knows their worth.
By Kaetlyn Summers for RelRules