When You Love Someone Who Is Taken

Elizabeth Tsung

Nobody set out to fall in love with someone who is taken or unavailable. With regards to the matter of the heart, there is no clear black and white. Sometimes things just happen beyond your control and it is too complicated to make sense of any of it.

Before it begins to happen to you, it is easy to swear up and down you will never be a willing participant in it.

But what happens when you don’t know any of it until it is too late? What happens when you’ve known this person your whole life? What happens when you are not doing anything, yet you are still tortured with this forbidden attraction?

From the moment, I know about the existence of him and her, I know he would never feel the way I felt for him. He would never see me the way he sees her.

I am not her.

I do not get to make him smile like she does, be twirling around in a cute sundress or flashing her wide, guileless eyes at him. I do not get to impress him just by trying my best and have him hanging onto my every word as though he cannot get enough of me. I do not get him to love me just by being myself and have him adores me as through I am the best thing that ever happened to him.

The way he loves her is boundless and immeasurable.

It has nothing to do with how she knows the right things to say or does all the right things. It has nothing to do with how she is as angelic as she appears.

It has nothing to do with anything.

He loves her just because. And I cannot compare.

For how do you compare the sun with its brilliant radiance to the moon with its waning shine? How do you compare the ocean with its unfathomable depth and rich diversity with the ordinary river that is lacking in depth?

How can I begin to hope for a glimpse of his heart when she possesses the whole of it?

She has all his attention. I’ve seen the way his eyes light up as she walked across the room. I’ve heard the affection in his voice as he looked at her. I’ve felt the intensity of how much she meant to him when he talked about her.

So why did he continued to give me false hope by letting his gaze linger on me for a second longer? Why did he persist to prolong my misery by refusing to let me go and to cease all contact with me? Why did he insist on pursuing me when his heart belongs to another?

It took me long enough but I’ve finally seen his true colors. He has never loved me and now, I’m not sure he loves her either.

He is just a slave to his desires. He put himself above anyone. He cares about himself too much to be able to love another.

I realized it is not any shortcoming of mine when he treated me the way he did. It was his when he chose to hurt me deliberately not once, but so many times.

It is not in my place to do anything but I hope one day, she will realize it too. That while she thinks he loves her, he loves himself even more such that he is not above hurting her. And she deserves someone whose mind and heart are in the right place.

She and I both deserve someone who is worthy of our love because he definitely is not that person. Thought Catalog Logo Mark

I write about falling in love and out of love.

Keep up with Liane on Instagram and medium.com

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