To The Girls Who Settle For A Love That Doesn’t Deserve Them

You are brave. You can do this. Don’t date him because you still love someone else, someone who doesn’t want you. Don’t be with him because you have not completely healed from wounds that are still bleeding. Don’t stay with him because you’re too enveloped in his kindness, a feeling you never knew. Don’t stay simply because you’ve acquired or made beautiful things with him, like a home, pets or children. Don’t fall for the first person who treats you nicely, the one who just happens to be there, because one day you will realize it will not be enough.

Many of us live paralyzed by the things we never say. We breathe in denial of the devoid in our hearts, and they numb us until they are the unbecoming of us. These unsaid words, of apathy and poignant realizations, are a cognizant reticence of the immensity of which we don’t want to be with a person or love them anymore. If we keep suppressing these emotions, they will shatter us one day. These feelings of pure overwhelmingness will sweep in like a flood, and they’ll slice us in waves so unexpectedly it will sting more than you ever knew.

Don’t settle when you realize the person you thought you loved is no longer that person, and the love you shared, the love that was once affectionate and pure, has turned into a toxic, possessive love in which you no longer recognize each other or yourselves.

Don’t stay with him any longer than you need to the minute you stop seeing yourself living in your own future, and the thought of being in his future is one that fills you with dread, because it isn’t unknown. You know what life will be like ten or twenty years down the line and you are terrified of the stagnancy and the mundane almost-living of life you know will be your fate.

Don’t insist on replaying the beginning of your relationship in your mind as you realize how much of yourself is crumbling away from being with the wrong person. Don’t allow your body to host the panic attacks and paranoia for months, tearing away little pieces of yourself as your relationship dies its irrevocable death. Don’t feel guilty when you’ve already grieved for your relationship before it ended. Because things change, people change, and sometimes it’s because we’re growing into the person we were always meant to be — and this person we are blossoming into might no longer mesh with the person whom we used to love.

So be the one who leaves. Be the one who breaks free.

Live for yourself, and your happiness only. Be the one who ends it now rather than later so both of you can move on, because both of you deserve to be happy, but most importantly, you deserve to be happy.