I've long believed that true love means persevering. That if you're patient enough, if you try hard enough, if you give enough of yourself, everything will work out. That things will get better one day, that one day you'll see how much you mean to me and love me the way I loved you.
But the truth was different. The love I knew wasn't the kind that healed. It was the kind that hurt. And the harder I tried, the more I lost myself.
Staying hurt me more than leaving.
Love shouldn't hurt - at least not all the time.
I'm not saying everything has to be perfect. Love isn't always easy. But if you have to convince yourself every day that it's worth it, if you cry more than you laugh, if you doubt more than you believe, if you long more than you feel... then that's not love.
I stayed for a long time because I was afraid that the emptiness would be too great after you. I was afraid of the feeling of loss. I was afraid that I would no longer be whole without you.
And then I left.
When I left you, I finally looked in the mirror.
For a long time I lost myself in you. In what I could have been. In what I wanted to be. But when I was left alone, I saw myself for the first time in a long time.
I saw how much love I gave to someone who couldn't receive it. I saw how many nights I spent in tears because I believed I wasn't enough. I saw how much of myself I sacrificed for something that was never right.
And when I realized that, I was no longer afraid.
I'm not afraid of being alone anymore. I'm afraid of getting lost again.
I am no longer afraid of loneliness. I am no longer afraid of the void left by you, because I know that I can fill it myself. I am no longer afraid of leaving, because I know that this was a beginning, not an end.
My biggest fear should have been that I would stay and continue to get lost in something that was destroying me.
I now know that true love doesn't require me to give up on myself. And that the love I was looking for was waiting inside me all along.
This is a love I will never leave again.
