This Is The Worst Type Of Love

People are so quick on their feet to state that the worst kind of the love – the most painful – is that in which the one you love cannot give you the same type of love back. They say that this hurts so much because you’ve given your all to the person, you’ve tried your best, you’ve walked the ends of the earth, sailed on the harshest oceans just to give one person the love you think they truly deserve, only for it to be thrown away.

Ignored.

Forgotten.

But nobody ever talks about the kind of love one gives to someone their heart doesn’t belong to. The kind of love that’s born out of, well, pity. Movies, books, and songs have circled in and around the idea that nothing hurts more than loving someone so deeply, so passionately, only to end up with your feelings not being reciprocated. They’ve all stressed that giving your all but not receiving anything back is the worst kind of love.

But it’s not.

The worst kind is continuously trying, continuously forcing, continuously putting in an effort to be with someone whom you know you cannot give the entirety of your heart to. Maybe not even a little bit. The worst kind of love is the mere act of pushing yourself to love someone whom you cannot love beyond friends.

It’s looking at this person with rose-tinted glasses because it’s the only way you’ll feel something from them. It’s letting words speak more than your actions because words are the only way you can fake your fairytale love story. It’s knowing the ending of your story, with them hurt and you finally free. It’s the sad truth of wanting your heart to be broken because it’ll hurt less than for you to break theirs.

It’s being the person on the other side of the coin, the other side of the story—the one who’s doing the hurting. I think that’s where it hurts the most.

Because even though you are treasured, you are cared for, you are loved, how do you stay happy with someone whose smile you do not think about at night, whose name you do not shout, whose touch you do not crave? How do you stay happy with someone whom you do not love?

I think everybody talks about how they have been hurt by those who do not love them, but I think it’s time we talk about how we hurt those who we pretend to. I think there’s nothing worse than settling with someone who promises you the sun when it’s the whole goddamn universe you want.