When You’re Blinded By One-Sided Love

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In the moment, the good seems great and the bad seems good. When time passes, after it’s all over, you have a lot of time to think about what really happened. The good suddenly seems good or sometimes even just okay. The bad, well, the bad finally seems bad now that judgment isn’t clouded with false ideals of love.

It’s hard to tell what true happiness and what one-sided affection is when words are being spoken that I’m meant to believe. When I’m constantly told that you mean what you say, but your actions don’t line up, it messes with my mind. Saying one thing and doing another speaks more to your character than to mine. But I’m the one who, in the end, took the fall for your actions.

I’m not going to miss the arguments that started small but went on to haunt our happiness for days. I’m not going to miss the constant wonder, the never-ending guessing game for where our next conversation would lead. I’m not going to miss the moments that I fell in love with you more and more, only to realize that it was all a facade. I’m not going to miss the nights where I stayed up until 4 a.m.—not with you, but talking to her, because she held the answers that I needed so badly to hear.

I am going to miss the moments where you helped me conquer my fears, even if it meant quite literally jumping off a bridge just because everyone else was doing it. I’m going to miss the airport adventures, mountain tops, long drives, and walks around the block. I’m going to miss your kiss, your touch, and your embrace. I’m going to miss the laughter and the smiles and the little moments of pure, sublime happiness. I’m going to miss the moment where I stupidly fell in love with you for the first time.

Is that more bad than good or is it more good than bad? It’s hard to keep score when it all flips in the blink of an eye. Let’s count up the moments on each side and we’ll see if at the end we feel complete or feel less than we did before. When everything is crashing down around us, it’s hard to stay sane, to stay connected, and to stay on the path we imagined for ourselves.

As more time passes, everything becomes more clear, and now it’s clear to me that somewhere along the way, we got lost. Love is only true love if it’s reciprocated. Love is not true love if you take what you’re given and lend it to someone else.

Through it all, I’ve learned a lot about love. I’ve learned that the love we give needs to line up with the reality we’re living in. If we love so much and give all of ourselves to a one-sided love, we will lose sight of the world around us. We are blind to the fact that the love we give is being tossed aside because words are being spoken to make us believe that the love we are sharing is well received.

So here is my lesson learned. Here is my advice to myself and to you, dear reader.

Through the ups and the downs and the unknown moments, emotions are high and people are tested. When reality sets in and the world you built and came to know shatters around you, you’re only left with one person to love, but you will be okay. That person will be honest and loyal and never make you take the blame for actions that were done to you, not by you. That person will help you conquer your fears, take you on adventures, and give you moments of ecstatic happiness because, well, that person is you. The highs will be high, and the lows will be low, but the love you hold in your heart and soul won’t need to be weighed or measured, because this love is the love you’ve needed all along.