I had to stop running after you. Not because I wanted to but because I needed to.
I had to make myself a priority. I had to stop the chase. I had to stop begging for the love you could never give back. I kept changing, adjusting and adapting to give you what you want, to make you feel safe and secure, to convince you that I was worthy of something with permanence. With you, I completely forgot how whole and enough I am. You didn’t need to exert any effort to see that, you just needed to open your eyes, but you still chose to keep them shut.
I was anything but less. We both knew that from the start, but you made me believe differently. You made me question my worth, you made me sound crazy to people I thought I knew better, you locked me back up inside the dark room I already once escaped. You made me feel insecure and unworthy. You knew that I worked tremendously hard to regain my once lost self, so you used that against me to hurt me, to force me into believing that I was nothing without you. You made me think that love is difficult, but it’s not—you were the one who made it seem hard.
It’s always been draining for me to trust people, to trust feelings; you were aware of that. I trusted this one time. I trusted you, but you made me ask why. You made it even more difficult to see the remaining benefit there is in trusting. That’s when I knew that I needed to cut the rope you tied around my neck. I just couldn’t keep following you around in circles; I couldn’t keep trying to make you stop running away. I stopped trying to make you come back.
It isn’t because I don’t deserve you, it is because you do not deserve me. I will not allow you, nor anyone, to make me feel disregarded and unloved. Not anymore, not again.
I will fiercely love myself until no one can harm me. And there’s nothing more dangerous than that.
