Please Stop Telling Me To Protect My Heart

You say to fall out of love; to keep my feelings at bay; to hold back my emotions, even when they won’t stop flooding my mind. You say that, as if love is a game, and my heart is something that I can protect.

I know your intentions are good. I know you see how special my heart is, and how many times I’ve given it away so carelessly. I know you don’t like to see me get hurt, because you’ve been there for me in some of my darkest times. You know I deserve better, and that my heart deserves everything it wants, as long as it waits until the right person comes along.

But I need you to let my heart make mistakes.

I need you to trust that it knows what it’s doing. I need you to let it see people through, and be reminded that it can withstand anything when those people are not all they appeared to be.

My heart is a prize, I know that, and it is the best thing I have to give to someone. It is what I have worked so hard to strengthen my whole life. It is what has remained tough through all the bullshit, and came back better than ever.

I know I have so much to offer. I know that someone someday won’t be afraid to see that. But I won’t make someone jump through hoops to get to me, because I have been asked to play that game way too many times, and I refuse to do that to someone.

Let my heart take risks and get hurt. It will be wrong. It will be impractical. It will be impatient, but it will be worth it.

I can’t predict when my heart will be able to stop fighting this fight, but I believe that it will all be over one day. For now, my heart is a resilient soldier, and I don’t want to get in its way. No matter how much I want to believe I’m above falling for people that aren’t good enough for me, I know I have no control over what my heart wants, and I trust it to make decisions that are better for me in the long haul.

My heart believes so greatly that someone else out there is willing to protect it, so I won’t have to. It falls in love with people it sees potential in, because it knows that it can withstand so much, even if it all comes crashing down. Even if my mind knows that it is so, so wrong.

I can handle the pain. I’ve been through enough in my life by now to know that, and my heart doesn’t see the need to be caged in. It doesn’t see the need to be protected and play games that don’t fully allow it to be free to feel. It wants to make the same mistakes over and over again, so that when it finally makes the right choice, it knows for certain.

It’s not that my heart doesn’t know what it wants, but I can admit that sometimes it plays tricks on me. I can admit that I don’t always feel confident in my choices. So maybe I’m not ready to settle down and make the right choice just yet.

It took a while for me to see the beauty of falling for the wrong people. I was so afraid to get hurt, and I was looking at my heart through it’s reflection in the eyes of someone else. But now I know why my heart chases what it wants. I know that I have to give something my all before I can say that it doesn’t matter to me anymore.

I know there are people out there who think they are winning because they play games that keep their feelings at arm’s length. Because they distance themselves from people who can hurt them. Because they are afraid to look at themselves and say they made a mistake, so they just choose not to feel anything.

I’m not one of those people.

I need to keep my heart wide open. I need to let it choose who it wants, even if that means getting rejected. I need to let it pick people who suck, just so I can know it will never have to worry what if.

I know maybe that doesn’t make my heart as appealing to some people who want a chase, but if there’s one thing my heart wants, it’s to show people what it can really do, not keep them guessing.

The right person will feel that, just as strongly as I do.