If You Don’t Appreciate Her Presence, You’ll Feel Her Absence

girl in sweatshirt, if you don't appreciate her she'll leave, strong women — Oladimeji Odunsi

You take her time for granted until it’s too late. You cancel plans last minute after she’s spent hours planning and getting ready. You keep in sporadic contact, hoping a loose thread will keep the seams of your connection in place. She will communicate her needs, she will tell you what she expects, and when you don’t deliver – she will leave.

She’ll decide that it’s not enough, that the trail of crumbs won’t lead her where she wants to go. She’ll look elsewhere, and just like that, she will be gone.

It doesn’t mean she won’t be hurt by her own decision. It doesn’t mean she won’t be sad that it’s over. It just means that she’s putting herself first – that she’s holding her standards above the way she feels about you.

It doesn’t matter how special you might have been. It doesn’t matter how intense the connection was or how amazing your kisses were. It doesn’t matter how fully you saw her, how well you understood her, or how easily she melted in your arms.

A strong girl will move on, because her relationship with herself is more precious than her relationship with you or anyone else.

She won’t compromise herself for you. She won’t betray herself for you. She will be heartbroken, but she will leave.

She will have the courage to say goodbye, to do away with an arrangement that left her wanting more. She will wish that you had given more, that you had taken her expectations seriously, and that you had valued her.

But a strong girl doesn’t need you to value her, because she values herself.

She wants you to respect her time – but ultimately, if you don’t, she won’t waste any more of it on you.

She knows there is someone who will see her as she sees herself: worthy of affection, worthy of effort, worthy of time, and worthy of commitment. She knows that in order to find that, she has to do away with anyone who can’t deliver. She knows she can’t change you, and she won’t try.

So don’t think that she’ll wait forever, that she’ll always be around the corner. A wise girl will vanish before your eyes – a strong girl will make you feel her absence.