You Cannot Love Someone Into Their Potential

Listen — if you are in love with someone who cannot love you back at the moment, please, understand that this is not a reflection of your goodness, this is not a reflection of your worth. Sometimes life weathers people in different ways. We are all on this Earth just trying to figure ourselves out, just trying to mend the breaks in our souls, just trying to deal with what is heavy within us. Sometimes, we’re ready and another person is not. Sometimes, we try, and another person does not. Sometimes, we pour ourselves into another human being and they cannot contain all that we are. Sometimes, we fight, and another person surrenders. Sometimes, we choose to make things work, and another person decides that they cannot choose that same reality. And that is okay. I need you to understand that that is okay.

Because at the end of the day, if someone does not meet you where you are, you cannot keep asking them to do so. If someone cannot reciprocate your love, if someone cannot give you what you truly deserve, you have to understand that aching for them to do so before they are ready is a form of self destruction. Your heart is a vast and tender thing, you cannot keep trying to shrink it into what someone else needs. You cannot keep pouring your love into a vessel that cannot contain it. You cannot keep pouring your love into a soul that has not opened their eyes to all that they are receiving. You cannot keep pouring your love into a heart that is closed off to it. It will only leave you empty. You have to walk away. You have to let this person grow on their own terms, because you can’t love someone into their potential. You can’t love someone into being ready. They have to do that on their own.

And I know how hard it is to walk away from someone you deeply care for. I know how hard it is to lay all of that love down, to close your heart off to all that it sees in another human being. But in walking away you will learn how to pour all of the love that you were giving to the wrong person, back into yourself. And you will learn how to pour it into all that you desire in life, you will learn how to pour it into your growth, into your art, into your hope. You will learn how to stand up for your feeling, how to stand up for its value. And when you teach yourself that you deserve to be loved, without having to beg for that love, without having to chase that love down, you open yourself to the kind of beauty that chooses you just as freely as you choose it. You open yourself to the kind of people who see you and immediately know that you are a rare and beautiful thing. You open yourself to new beginnings, to a future that unfolds in ways that don’t hurt or break you down, but rather, build you up, and show you just how worthy you are of having your heart held.