Read This When They Leave You Feeling Worthless

You were the first person I ever truly shared my body with. Others had just gotten glimpses and shared small moments with me, but it was to you I showed everything. Body and soul, inside and out, it was like the only reason you put me up on a pedestal was to increase the pain of the fall. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I see it clearly now.

No matter what I did and who I became, I would never be enough for you.

Enough.

We spend so much of our lives wishing and wanting to just simply be enough for someone to finally stay. Maybe if you start dressing a certain way or wear your makeup differently or just lose a few more pounds, you will finally have their love.

But the problem with measuring love in increments of “enough” is that you become trapped in a game you can never truly win.

Someone who loves you for who you are as a person isn’t going to tell you that you’re disgusting. You will never be enough for a person like this, and one day you will realize that this fact is a blessing. It is no way to spend the rest of your days wondering if today will be a good day or a bad day and if today they will think you are beautiful, but by tomorrow will you only disgust them? Life does not have to be this way.

Maybe it started with small comments here and there. Comments on your diet and exercise. Suggestions that maybe you should try dyeing your hair. Hints at what celebrities he finds most attractive (which you, of course, have no resemblance to). What we do not realize is that each small comment does not just disintegrate once it’s said; the smaller the insults are, the easier it becomes for them to get tucked away into your memory, just building up over time, waiting for the moment when it all becomes too much.

You were always too much for him. Nothing you ever did was right, no matter how hard you tried. You were too skinny, so you were disgusting. But at the same time, you needed to start working out. Your bras and underwear were not the colors and styles he liked, so you could never feel sexy even when you tried so hard to. And when you did finally match them in the way that he liked, in the colors that he liked, they did not fit you how he wanted them to because you were still just not the right body type for him.

You always wanted to be held too much. You were looking for comfort when all he wanted was to get off. You didn’t matter, and neither did your own needs; you were just there to fulfill someone else’s idea of “love.” Love shouldn’t make you feel like this. The more vulnerable you became, the more he dug away at you, stripping you to your core and making you question everything. When you start to believe that everything is your fault, but you can’t even remember what you did to get to this point, know that it is not your fault. You were in love, and they took advantage of that. They created this discordant world of pain and insecurity, not you.

This is not your fault.

How can you tell someone they are disgusting in the same bed you tell them you love them in? How can you finally wear someone down enough to get them to completely share themselves with you only to get mad at them when it doesn’t go as planned? When the person who claims they want to spend the rest of their life with you tells you not to touch them after one of the most intimate moments in your relationship, how can you ever stop replaying that moment in your mind?

You can’t.

It can be three years later, and it still hurts. No one who loves you would discard you so easily when things don’t work out on the first try.

It is as if those of us who are the most vulnerable people are sought out by those whose idea of love is to hurt. I wonder sometimes if I am just an easy target because I care so much for others that I often neglect myself. I spent years letting someone tear me down after I had finally started to feel comfortable in my own skin, and now I will spend even more time trying to erase their words and actions from my memory.

Be careful who you open yourself up to because you never know what lies beneath their surface.

Intimacy is already such a complicated aspect of relationships, and the last thing any of us needs is to have someone cutting us down every time we decide to try to please them. If they cannot respect your body, then they don’t deserve to enjoy it.