I Know You Love Them, But You Need To Love Yourself More

One of the hardest things you may ever have to face in life will be the decision to either stay in a broken relationship or to walk away. To look at the person you once thought you would be blissfully happy with until the end of time and admit to yourself and everyone around you that your heart no longer beats for them in the same way it used to. To gaze into their eyes and realize you see a complete stranger standing in front of you that has shattered your trust with their words and actions. Knowing that you are leading separate lives and are both holding on to the beautiful memories you once created before the storm set in. Desperately trying to reenact them in the hope that the amnesia will soon wear off and you find yourself back in each other’s loving arms, in a time when things seemed perfect—a time when you were blinded by love.

Sometimes, the damage that has been done is irreparable, no matter how much you try to bluff your way into believing it can be fixed. You can tell yourself a thousand times a day that they will change, but deep down to the depths of your core, you can hear your gut screaming at you. It is refusing to let you be that naïve. You try to silence the noise that surrounds you but it only seems to get louder, making you cycle through the happiness and the sadness. When they see you slowly slipping away they throw you some half-hearted love in an attempt to show they still care for you, leading you into a false sense of security. It takes you right back to the start. You play a motion picture in your mind of what the future could look like if things just stayed this way for good. How you always imagined them being. Then, within the blink of an eye, you snap out of your daydream and notice the sinking feeling that is reality come rushing back through your body like a freight train. So you force the broken pieces of your relationship back together in anticipation that it will resemble something similar to the picture you still recall in your mind. But when you take a step back to look at the picture from afar, the cracks are too deep to fix.

Staying in a toxic relationship out of fear of the unknown is more detrimental than you can possibly envisage. It slowly kills your soul until you no longer recognize your reflection in the mirror. It is the limiting belief you aren’t worthy of ever experiencing a beautiful kind of love, one without contractual conditions that you are expected to sign your name to. Every argument you lose sleep over and every lie that passes their lips and touches your ears is a continuous reminder of the suffering you have tolerated. Living in a whirlwind of volatile love and broken promises is prolonging the inevitable sadness that awaits you, no matter how many detours you choose to take to avoid the end destination. You can continue to patch things up with a paper smile and a bandage, but whenever they fall, your scars will still remain unhealed and raw, reminding you of your vulnerability.

Change is a choice, one only we can make for ourselves. It is a conscious decision to look within and understand ourselves on a soul level and ascertain whether we like a certain part of our design or we don’t, and if we don’t, to take action and work on it. Spending time hoping, wishing, and forcing others to change will only lead to disappointment and sadness. Trying to change someone in order to make a partnership work is a clear indication that you are just not compatible together. That perhaps as hard as it is and as much as you love someone, you are no longer aligned with that person’s beliefs and actions. You are allowed to love and care for someone that no longer makes you happy or that has hurt you deeply, but it is your responsibility to stand your ground and demand better for yourself, to call time on something that is no longer working.

Making the decision to walk away can seem like a mountain to climb that you’re not mentally or physically prepared for—a climb so steep that it might throw you off the edge halfway to the summit. You hypothesize every possible outcome for each path you have the choice to take in the hope that it will lead you to the right answer without having to commit to the pain that lies ahead. The unknown is a terrifying nightmare that you choose not to think about, so staying in a fragmented relationship seems to be the easiest option for fear of being left on your own. After all, you can only really evaluate what you will lose if you choose to say goodbye, so you trick yourself into believing being in a toxic relationship is better than being in no relationship.

But what if things become better than your wildest dreams ever led you to believe? What if by walking away, you meet the one that you were destined to be with all along? The one that falls in love with your mind and would tread the earth just to see your smile. What if walking away gives you a newfound confidence that helps you see your own inner beauty? What if you awaken happier than when you fell asleep? What if the road ahead of you is full of exciting new experiences that take you down the path that the universe is telling you that you need to take?

I am here to tell you that you are ready. You will ascend that mountain with ease and wonder why you hadn’t done it sooner. It doesn’t matter what lies ahead of you, nothing will ever make you feel more lonely than the pain and heartache you have already endured. When you reach the highest peak, you will stand speechless, in awe of the views you finally get to see, and you’ll realize that the climb was worth it in the end. You will learn that pushing yourself through the difficult situations you fear the most is a necessity in order to grow into the person you are destined to be. You will realize that no matter how much you love someone, loving yourself more is the most important lesson of them all. That the only person who will always be there for you through it all is you.