Relationship is a weird word that people who aren’t in them come to despise. Not so much because they can’t find someone, but rather they have met someone and haven’t quite gotten it right. And the feelings are all there. You’re led to believe this actually could be something. And in your mind you play make believe, you dance with these ideas of how wonderful it could one day be.

We foolishly use the word love, to describe our feelings towards these people. And it important to note it isn’t the wrong word to use, but rather the wrong person to use it towards who isn’t worthy of our love.

Because love simply isn’t supposed to hurt this much.

But we settle. We allow love to consume us and trick us in a way into thinking this sort of thing is normal. Because it isn’t all bad. Only a complete and total fool would invest time and energy into someone if it was all horrible.

There is something that keeps us there. It’s the promises we want to believe. It’s the I love yous, three simple words, but their actions counter it. They tell us one day, it’ll work out. They tell us one day, we will get it right. So we hope for one day. But we hold onto blind faith and hope that there’s something there. We aren’t crazy for believing in someone we care about. We hold onto the good moments and the physical aspects of the relationship. The conversations throughout the day. It’s the exchanging of secrets, and we feel no one could possibly know us as well as they do. We feel it’s only ever been them and no one could ever replace them. They get it. Because it isn’t just an almost relationship, they’re our best friend too.

But we can’t dismiss the fact that there’s a really dark side to these relationships. When things are going good, we forget about the nights we cried ourselves to sleep. We forget about the ignored texts which kept us on your toes, as you watched bubbles that disappeared. They knew we were just staring at our phone. We wonder what they are doing, and who they are with. They leave us feeling insecure in a way we never had before. We forget we’ve been jumping through hoops of fire, but there are times we get burnt, maybe it’s happened so much it no longer hurts. We forget about every abrupt ending, and the circles we continue to run in. We forget about the confusion and the blurry lines, and how they redraw them, however, they’d like.

Relationships aren’t supposed to be an almost thing.

And the idea of letting go tears at our heartstrings, because we know what we deserve, and we know it isn’t this. Then that thought, though, if we try again, maybe you’ll get it right? And it’s that thought that keeps this going. They’ve become a habit we’re scared to break. They become time we don’t want to realize is wasted. Because we can’t quite imagine a time, in our life, where they aren’t consuming every bit of it, and controlling so much of our thoughts and feelings.

We want to be free of them, but we also fear that freedom too. We fear not ever loving someone as we do them. We fear just turning back around like we have every time before. We fear missing them, but who could possibly miss someone, that doesn’t treat them well 100%. But we seem to and feel like a fool for it.

But then one day, you just get tired. Tired of it all.

You harbor the courage to let go. And it isn’t just letting someone go, but it’s letting someone go and it’s losing part of yourself too. Because we have allowed them unknowingly to define us and define our self-worth.

But we let go because we deserve someone that makes you feel good 100% of the time. We let go because we shouldn’t just like half of one person. We let go because we want someone to love us, as deeply as we love them.

We finally accepted, that we’ll never get that ending we envisioned.

So to my almost relationship, this is me letting go. This is me moving on. This is me for the first time, giving myself what I deserve.

It takes strength to believe in someone and believe in a future, that in uncertain, but of the greater strength, comes in the moment you realize you deserve so much more than this.