The Moment I Realized Your Potential Was Not Enough
By Rania Naim
When I was scared at the hospital as they took my mom to the operation room, when I was fighting so hard to hold back my tears, when I didn’t know what to say or how to stand, when I was numb and helpless — I realized your potential wasn’t going to hold my hand, your potential wasn’t even there to console me and your potential was not enough to help me get through the agony of waiting for the Doctors to come out and tell me that she is okay.
When I was alone in the rain, in the dead of the night. When I was shivering from the cold, when I couldn’t find a single person to call to come pick me up and take me home — I realized that your potential wasn’t going to protect me, your potential wasn’t coming to find me and your potential wasn’t going to care if I was safe or if I made it home in one piece.
When I couldn’t sleep at night because I was stressed about everything, when my thoughts were all over the place, when all my fears decided to haunt me at midnight, when everything that could possibly go wrong, went wrong — your potential didn’t reassure me, your potential didn’t calm my storms and your potential didn’t hold me until I fell asleep, it didn’t sleep next to me telling me that I don’t have to fight all my battles alone, that I don’t have to be alone with my demons.
Your potential never showed up. Your potential wasn’t even close. Your potential never saved the day. Your potential broke my heart.
I realized your potential may not even be real. Your potential is what I saw, what I believed you could be, what I thought your bits and pieces will come together to produce, but it wasn’t who you are and it wasn’t who you could be. It was all my thoughts, my assumptions, my conclusions and my hopes but it wasn’t real.
Your potential was who I wanted to fall in love with, it was everything I wished you could do and everything I wished you could be, but it wasn’t even close to who you are.
I realized that maybe I never really loved you. Maybe, I always loved who I thought you could be.
But it took me a long time to realize that your potential didn’t even exist, your potential could never love me and I deserve more than just a potential, more than just an idea.
The moment I learned that I was looking for real, beautiful, deep and honest love, was the moment I realized that your potential was never enough.