You deserve to wake up in the morning and not question the love of the person lying beside you. You deserve to speak freely, crazily and passionately, and not think for even the slightest second that the words spewing from your pouty lips are boring the person who pretends to listen. You deserve the kind of love, the kind of wild passion that has only existed in “Nicholas Sparks” novels and in your wildest daydreams.
I wish he was that for you. I wish he didn’t make you question who you are or who you’re going to be. I wish he provided the net to catch you when you feel like breaking. I wish he wasn’t the catalyst to your broken heart. I wish he wasn’t the reason why you’re crumbling. I wish he didn’t make you cry, or leave you behind. I wish he didn’t make you doubt love because love is actually quite a beautiful thing.
And I know you’ll find it one day. And that love, it’ll be warm, and it’ll be inviting. It’ll leave you feeling glowing because real love is the kind of love you deserve to have and have deserved to have all along. You deserved real love while you sat in your room behind locked doors. You deserved real love while you told the same story to your best friend for hours on end. You deserved real love during the fights and when his words made you feel, if for only a minute, less than how you should ever feel about yourself.
He is not what defines you and right now, at this very moment, I know it’s hard to let him go. The image of what he could be-of who he promised to be stays with you; it lingers. I was like you. I hung tightly to the image of the man I wanted him to be: strong, protective, loving-but he was never any of that to me. Most nights he just pretended. I grew tired of falling asleep alone in a California King, watching our love fall apart and for a while, I fought it. I tried convincing myself that staying together was worth it. I tried convincing myself that all relationships have rough patches.
But this was no rough patch. My love, he hit me. He violated me. He made me question myself. He made me hate myself. He made me swear that life would never get better and for a while, I accepted the kind of love I thought I deserved.
Please, don’t waste as much time as I did being too afraid to pursue a chance at true happiness. Don’t belittle yourself. Don’t devalue yourself. Don’t convince yourself that you’re okay with a subpar kind of love-or life.
Real love takes courage, and it takes effort. It requires you to make choices about what kind of love and what kind of life will ultimately define you. Choose happiness. Choose the man who is going to see sparks fly when you smile at him. Choose the man who dances with you to no music, who tells you he loves you because he means it, not because he thinks it’s what you want to hear at that moment in time. Choose love-first. Decide that you have no choice but to show yourself the kind of love that you know you’re deserving of someone who will inspire you, cherish you, and want the very best for you for as long as time stands still. That love begins with you. And I promise you that real kind of love, those sparks…they’ll find you. And when they do, you’ll be ready.
by Courtney Dercqu