Sometimes You Are Going To Get Led On And Left Behind

Sometimes you are going to get excited about a relationship that never happens. You will tell all of your friends about this new person you have met, this person who you can imagine dating for a long time. You will mention their name to your parents. You will imagine your first date inside of your head. You will pick out the outfit you will wear. You will plan what you’re going to say. You will have everything mapped out in your mind.

Sometimes people will drop out of your life unexpectedly. You will spend every night texting them for months and then they will disappear out of the blue. You will wait for a response you assume is coming soon, and after you realize you won’t be getting one, you’ll send a second text. You’ll DM them. You’ll call them. You’ll find more ways to contact them and more ways for them to reject you.

Sometimes you will have no idea why someone you cared about so deeply decided to abandon you. You will struggle to find closure because you won’t be able to pinpoint their reason for leaving. You won’t be able to figure out what went wrong because it seemed like everything was going well. You will scroll through your old texts and reread them to find red flags. To see if there was unseen tension you never noticed. To get answers to questions they left you to deal with alone.

Sometimes you won’t see the betrayal coming. You will assume the relationship is only beginning. You will think you are both on the same page. You will tell yourself it’s only a matter of time until your relationship gets taken to the next level and you become official. When they disappear one day, you will be thrown completely off guard. The loss will be totally unexpected. You won’t know how to process what happened. You won’t know whether to remain angry or sad or annoyed.

Sometimes you will get led on by someone you thought you could trust. You will assume someone is going to be in your world for a long time and then discover they had a completely different idea. You will realize the future you had in your head will never become a reality. The disappointment will set in soon after that. You will have trouble accepting that all of the things you were looking forward to doing with this person will never happen. You have trouble believing that you will never see them again.

Sometimes you will hate yourself for jumping to conclusions. For assuming someone had strong feelings for you. For thinking it was going to be different this time, even though you have been hurt so many times in the past. You will blame yourself for what happened. You will decide that you never should have gotten attached in the first place, you never should have let yourself care.

Sometimes you will have to heal from relationships that never grew into something serious. Sometimes you will have to say goodbye to people you were not ready to lose.