Loving The Ones That Show Up

 My Love,

Why is it that we punish the ones that showed up? I realize why I'm so hesitant at times and it's because the ones that stuck around were the ones I counted on leaving. The ones that left were the ones I wanted desperately to stay. I can't change the heart of man (human). I can't speak to the reasons that cause some to walk away and leave you with dashed hopes of what you wanted that relationship to be. I don't know if I have tips on how to grieve the loss of hope for what they stood for in your life. I'm sorry they left. I'm sorry they didn't fight for you in the way you needed them to. But, for a moment tell yourself that their leaving had nothing to do with you, your worth, or anything you lacked. 

When we experience loss in any form I think for most there is a tendency to go within. We begin to pick at the areas most fragile in our lives and blame those insecurities for a set of actions we had no control over. That fear of loss that lingers can take hold of us in ways we never expected it to. It sometimes settles in the form of anger and it's those that stayed that pay the price. My love, why do the ones that stick around pay the price for the pain of those that left?

I knew you were hurt. I knew you were in pain but why was I the blame? I was here. I stayed and I loved you anyway. Isn't it amazing how we can criticize those that left all while leaving, maybe not physically but emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. We are so hard on those that stuck around mainly from them not being the ones that left. We do this in subtle, subconscious ways, a harsh response, a disgusted glance, and exhausted tones are all little ways that bite at the foundation of a relationship. In our frustration, we push those that stayed away only for them to walk away with that hurt, having to choose to stop the cycle.

Listen, my love, I know you wanted it to be them but I wanted it to be you and here we are. I built a life around you. I hoped for you and what you could be, and do, and see. I thought about you and prayed for you and dreamed of you. Now I am here with someone that isn't you. It isn't you next to me when I wake up and it feels wrong. It feels like a betrayal of the love I wanted to share with you. I'm reserved and a little less open because what if like you, they leave? I overthink twice as much as I speak because I don't know if it was something I said that caused all of this. I don't have answers and I take it out on the one that is here because after all they just want to experience a love with me. 

I'm sorry that it took me so long to see you. I almost lost you in the midst of trying to leave you. Not seeing what I had because I was seeing past you, through you, around you. See the one that left me wasn't you. The one that cared was always you. You were the one that dried my eyes when I cried over the one that wasn't you. You were the one picking up pieces so gently as I neglected to realize they were fragments of my broken heart. But you loved me anyway. You were healthy, non-toxic, stable and I hated that. I hated that you were there and I'm sorry. I was so busy runny, searching, and begging for the one who left to come back and for what? The corrosion of their toxicity. That is what I thought completed me. 

I was wrong my love. I was wrong to hold the actions of the one that left, against you. Thank you for the space to heal. The freedom to open up slowly, gently, and purposefully. The is beauty in our love because it's real. It's more than what was hoped for. Greater than one could imagine. It is ours and ours to define. It happened when I let go of the love lost and opened myself to love that exists. We can focus so much at times on what we don't have that we fail to see what's right in front of us. It's not beautiful because everyone around me calls it so. It's beautiful because I made it so. 

Live in the beauty of life with those who show up. Choose those who healthily choose you, in love, in friendship, in life. People will walk away and that is okay. Others will choose to stay (for all the right reasons) and that is beautiful. There may be some pains left by those who walked away, open yourself to healing from it and not living in it. If energy is neither created nor destroyed let's be the force that changes its trajectory.