Falling In Love with Yourself When He Stops Loving You

By

“I don’t love you anymore.” The most painful words I’ve ever heard. I felt the weight of those words closing in on me. My breath sped up, my heart pounding out of my chest. I begged him to take it back. “I don’t love you anymore.” But what I heard was “you are no longer worthy of my love”.

The tone in my voice turned towards desperation.

“Can I please just have one last kiss?”

I delusioned myself into believing he just forgot. It was momentary amnesia where he could no longer remember the taste of my lips, the brush of my skin, my heart beat synchronized with his. I could see the discomfort in this face but I didn’t care. I needed him to remember all the reasons why I was somebody he could love. Please remember.

“I don’t think that’s a good—” I cut him off before he could finish his sentence.

“Please” my voice cracked.

He leaned in with pity, half kissed my lips, pulled away and told me with his eyes that it was over.

The months that followed were blurry because of the amount of alcohol I had to consume to forget the pain of the wound that would not heal.

The brief and rare moments of sobriety, my mind was cluttered with memories of the most ordinary days. They always seem to be the favorites in the end.

The lingering pain resided in the unanswered questions. What did I do that made him stop loving me? What is it that he saw that made him requestion my worth? I felt like I was nothing. Worse than nothing. Because nothing meant I didn’t exist. That we didn’t exist. But we did. Our love was every writer’s wish for a perfect story. And yet he felt my love and all of its power and decided I wasn’t enough. That was worse than nothing.

I had cried more tears than raindrops in Seattle before I finally had enough. I put the bottle down, picked up the pieces, turned off Adele and faced myself. I had to let the pain tear through me without trying to numb it or run from it.

I had to fall in love with myself. I looked for all the parts of me that I admired and wrote them down. I devoted time to the hobbies that I never seemed to have time for in the past. I created art, found my soul, and learned to love the hell out of myself. Yes I, the girl formerly married to vodka and bathroom floors, am worthy.

It was 10 months before I finally received the text I had been pleading to God for. “I miss you.”

I looked at my phone, heart racing, ready to burst into tears. But I breathed in and put my phone down. I looked around and saw life spinning around me, the love I had given myself, and the endless possibilities that were waiting ahead. I was no longer his to hurt. So I took a breath or and hit send.

“And you always will.”