All The Ways I Fucked Up By Letting Myself Love You

When we talk about love so often it’s talking about how it’s inevitable. How it’s out of our control. How falling in love is just that, falling. That it happens without our consent or approval and one day we’re not and then one day we are.

We talk about love like it’s not our choice. Like we have no say. Like love is something that just happens to us. Where once there was nothing now there’s all this love that manifested from nowhere.

But reality? That’s bullshit. 

Seriously. It’s bullshit with a capitol b, underlined, bolded, and shouted from the rooftop.

There is always a moment. There is always a moment when you can choose a path, and effectively change the course of your life. It may not be exactly what you want to do or what is going to feel the greatest at the time, but there’s always a choice.

And I completely fucked myself over when I chose to love you.

I did. I made the biggest mistake of my life when I saw that line dividing ‘casual’ and ‘falling for you’ and decided to cross it. I saw you and loving you and threw myself into a game where I didn’t know the rules and was ultimately destined to come in last.

I fucked up by letting myself love you because I allowed you to take a space of control over myself that once had been reserved for only me. I allowed you to have a say in my emotions, my self-worth. When I let myself love you I gave you a power over me that no one else had ever had before. And you abused it.   

I made a huge error in judgement when I chose to love you because you were never going to be able to love me back the way I wanted, the way I needed. You were too wrapped up in you and loving yourself to ever really love someone else. I should have copied you instead of loving you.

I fucked myself over by choosing to love you because there’s a piece of myself I’ve never been able to get back. You took it with you when you left. You put it in your pocket or on some high, high shelf where I’ll never be able to reach it no matter how hard I try. It sits there, collecting dust and being unused. To be honest I’m not even sure I’d recognize that piece of me if I did see it ever again, even though I know I won’t.

I fucked up by choosing to love you because I should have chosen myself.

I should spent those months, those years figuring out how to love myself and be the best advocate for me. Instead of wasting years on someone who would ultimately forget me, who would ultimately not be there one day, I should have been paying attention to me. I should have been falling in love with myself.

See, the only thing that you’re doing when you act like love is out of your control is refusing to take responsibility for your own happiness, and for your own heartbreak. You’re pinning all of the blame onto another person instead of examining your own choices, and what you could have done different. We talk about falling and fate and destiny and inevitability because it’s easier than saying, “I should have done that differently.”

I completely fucked myself over when I let myself love you. Because at the end of the day, it wasn’t what was right for me.

I chose to love you, and I shouldn’t have.

But now? I’ll never choose anyone over myself ever again.