Walking Away To Find The Love I Deserve

For years, I have been writing in my journal all the heartaches and lost loves I’ve experienced. I have always been a romantic and love falling in love. Due to that fact, I have a long list of love affairs. Yet when I reread my journals I question whether I was ever really experiencing healthy love.

Many of the relationships and experiences I write about seem extremely one sided. Always with me on the short side. I recognize signs of emotional abuse and unhealthy relationships as a theme coloring the pages of my journals.

In many entries, I even write specifically the red flags I identify in the relationship. Then I proceed to ignore them. After weeks, months or even years, the negative finally is too much to bear, and I eventually walk away. All the while pouring my heart into my journal. Writing about the loss, pain and heartbreak all along the way.

After a certain amount of time I began to get discouraged because I couldn’t seem to learn. The same stories of heartache kept filling the pages of my life. The same mistakes were haunting me endlessly. I wasn’t learning my lesson.

There are many reasons to keep a journal. It helps relieve stress while you’re writing. It is a safe space to truly express yourself. But the most important for me, is that it holds me accountable. It has taken years, but I am beginning to see a slow change.

I still am in love with love, but I am learning how to create boundaries. And I am learning to walk away sooner rather than later. The damage is less. The heartbreak still hurts, but hope for something better keeps me grounded.

I am learning that it takes more than just asking for the love I deserve. I must set an example by loving myself first and honoring that love. To find the love I deserve, I must go beyond just asking for it and enter into the hard work of refusing to settle for anything less.

I yet again find myself in a situation of love and heartbreak. There is no shortage of the love I have to give and I want so badly for the relationship to work, but the recipient of that love is unavailable. For whatever reason, his words and actions don’t match. He is a wonderful person, and I could go on and on about all the reasons why I love him. But the truth is I am grasping on to some false hope that things will change. That he will eventually give me all the love I deserve instead of the measured-out doses that satisfy his desires but fail to cure mine.

This time I am finally writing a new story in my journal. This time I am going to not just ask, but demand for the love I deserve by walking away. I no longer want to settle for loving a man that refuses to offer the same love in return. It hurts to walk away, but in reality, I win.

Saying goodbye isn’t easy, but it opens me up for something better. Saying goodbye creates a boundary for healthy love to flourish. He will either figure out his desires for me and remedy the situation due to my absence or he won’t. But either way I get the love I deserve, starting by offering it to myself and settling for no less.