You Have To Love Yourself, Even When He Can’t Seem To
The love that you felt towards him, someday, will grow into love for someone else. And it's not going to be another boy. It'll grow into love for yourself.
Quite possibly one of the hardest thing in life to deal with is when the person you love, doesn’t love you back. Maybe you guys broke up a long time ago and you still are holding onto him. Maybe he’s the guy you’ve had a crush on forever, but has a girlfriend. Or maybe, you guys hooked up and the next day, he told you it wasn’t anything serious for him.
Whatever the case may be, you have to love yourself even when he can’t seem to.
But, it’s easier said than done. This takes hard work, of course. And lots and lots of time. It’s not going to happen in an instant. You can’t just wake up and decide to love yourself again. You can’t just decide to be happy. You need to give yourself time and space to heal that hurt. You need to be gentle with yourself, and not put a time limit on your heartbreak.
I remember watching “Sex And The City” after a bad breakup. Charlotte York, one of my characters on the show said something I will never forget. She said, “It takes half the total time you went out with someone to get over them.” And I call total bullshit. You should never time your healing process. You should never expect to feel magically different over the next few weeks.
Your heart just doesn’t work like that. Love doesn’t work that way.
If you truly loved someone who is unable to love you back, it is incredibly painful. No one is going to say words that will take that hurt away. No hookup will take that pain away. No amount of nights out are going to take the sting off.
It’s ultimately up to you and time to heal.
So, what do you do? How do you get over him? How does one let go? Truth be told, I don’t know. I don’t have a magical list of things to do that can help you heal. But I can tell you my story.
My first heartbreak didn’t take six months for me to heal. And it didn’t take a year. To be perfectly honest, I’m still healing as I write this. And it’s been three years. I refuse to believe that you can heal completely from someone not loving you back. I refuse to believe that someone can magically be perfectly fine after that hurt.
You can’t just bounce back up. It’s impossible.
I think that as time passes and as your heart starts to stitch itself back together, you’ll learn how to cope with the pain. You’ll learn how to survive. But it’s never going to go away completely. Sure, you’ll be able to move on from him and you’ll be able to love things about yourself that you thought you’d never love again.
But, you are never going to be the same.
And I think that’s what make love so beautiful. It’s accepting that the pain you feel is always going to stay with you. And as years pass, you’ll still feel a little bit of it no matter how much you have grown and have moved on. And as time passes, it’s not so much pain as it is reminiscing and remembering.
It might sting from time to time, but as the years pass, you’ll start to be grateful. Grateful for that love you felt. And grateful that your heart has the capacity to love that strongly. To feel that much. To love so powerfully.
So you see, this love that you feel is gone now? It’s never going to leave you. It’s always going to be held in a tiny fraction of your heart. And as time passes, the hurt you’re feeling now is going to become less. It’s going to bloom into something better. It’s going to turn into happy memories, into transformation and into self love. It’s incredible that you have the capacity to love as much as you did. And even though he hurt you, you’re going to be ok. You’re still surviving and breathing aren’t you?
And guess what? The love that you felt towards him, someday, will grow into love for someone else. And it’s not going to be another boy.
It’ll grow into love for yourself.
You are going to fall in love with yourself. That hurt will turn into recognition that you are a powerful and beautiful source of love. And you can turn all that hurt into something beautiful.
No matter how much you love him and no matter how much you feel like shit now, it’s going to get better. You’re going to grow. You’re going to get stronger. You’re going to start learning how to love yourself.
