This Is How Tough Love Helped Me Toughen Up

Tough love is an act of not showing too much kindness to a person you love. It is not only an excuse to be a bitch but also to save the person we love from more bullshit. It may also be a defense mechanism to avoid getting hurt.

They would say, “This way you would learn your lesson.”

So, I followed.

Just like how Christian Grey loved Anastasia but couldn’t help to punish her when she did something that is out of the rule book. You need to follow or you’ll get hurt.

And now I could say that I did it the right way.

Loving myself was too hard, it was too rough. All I could find was empty promises, broken bones and white lies. I couldn’t find valid reasons to love who I was.

They said, regardless of who you are you should still love yourself.

And, I did.

I stopped myself from falling in love with a stranger’s smile and kind gestures that would only give me heartache in the end.

I stopped giving lost people directions to where they needed to go that would only make them leave me behind.

I stopped pouring my heart out on the things I write for thinking that nobody would ever understand.

I restricted myself from giving away love thinking that I didn’t deserve to be half-loved back.

I toughened up.

And then I realized that instead of treating myself right it was kind of a tough love relationship between me and the mirror.

I’d break her into pieces and then pick her up in the morning only to break her again when the sun goes down.

Maybe I didn’t love myself right. I’d stop myself from being happy thinking that after I’d be crying my eyeballs out.

They said I was only holding myself back from the happiness that I really deserved.

Maybe they’re right.

But I wasn’t, you know. I wasn’t holding myself back.

I was conditioning myself to be tougher. To be strong enough and not fall into the hands of someone who will only hurt me in the end.

Someone who doesn’t know how to hold a diamond and only drop me when there are petty stones spread around the dirt; someone who doesn’t have the balls to stay.

I was preparing myself for something bigger, something more meaningful and more worthy of the love I’ve been trying to save.

I wasn’t scared or mean or cold. I was not ready.

So, this is how tough love helped me to toughen up.

I loved myself in the toughest way possible, so when the time comes and it’s here, whatever it is that’s coming for me, I’ll be so ready that even the sun will on be his knees begging God to let him be with the moon.

The world will be so jealous of how happy I am and realize that the tough girl really has a heart after all.

Sometimes tough love isn’t here to make you hate but to make you appreciate more.