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I’m not sure why I did it.
There he was. The name popped up on my phone again. After months of cursing his name, complaining to my friends, and nearly printing out a picture of his face and putting a dart through it, I responded.
It had been a week of silence, so I probably should’ve seen it for what it was. Telling me he thought about me and my mom every single day. Wanting to catch up over Facetime. Showing me the pictures of his new dog he adopted with his partner.
And— duh — he knew he could get away with it.
Because I always did the same thing. I was as sweet as could be. I framed myself as perfect. The excessively positive one. The one who had a big circle of fun and attractive friends. A career that was taking off and maybe a hint of a potential love interest.
But at the end of the day, none of it worked. I was still responding to every text. I was still giving and giving and giving to someone who kept me on the back burner when it should’ve been clear all along.
I wasn’t being chosen.
I was only an option.
And doesn’t being an option tell you everything you need to know?
Instead of being their french vanilla, we’re the pot of decaf getting stale on the back burner.
I think many of us act as though love is a competition. Like being in school, it’s whoever can out-perform the rest. That only if we improve enough — if only we are everything they want — they’ll choose us.
We allow people to take us for granted. We allow them to control our time and energy because we have convinced ourselves that we can’t live without them.
We construct personalities that aren’t real. Put on faces that are really masks. Fake interests and play video games because he loves video games and if I do too…maybe he’ll FINALLY realize he loves me.
And that’s just not how it works.
You deserve someone certain of you.
Someone who is certain of you actually calls. They make it obvious. They respond to texts. They apologize for their mistakes and when they haven’t heard from you in two days they point it out and ask why.
It’s time I realized threatening to walk away from people who put me on the backburner is a win-win. It’s a win if they realize I am what they want, but it’s also a win when they let me down.
Then I’m free.
Not enough of us say what we want. We wait around until they pop up on our phones. Destroy ourselves to become the person we think they need. Settle for less because we think we can’t do better.
We make ourselves their decaf.
Don’t be their decaf.
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Previously published on psiloveyou.xyz and is republished here under permission.
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