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There are moments in our lives when we realize: no matter how much love we offer, no matter how much patience we summon, we cannot heal someone else’s fear for them.
This piece is for anyone who has ever tried to stay long enough, love hard enough, or soften themselves small enough to ease another’s wounds—only to find themselves disappearing in the process.
It’s a reminder: your heart is not a rehabilitation center for other people’s fears.
You deserve a love that meets you where you stand.
You are not a waiting room.
You are not a hospital bed.
You are not a place for half-loved hearts to rest until they find their courage.
You are not the rehabilitation center for other people’s fears.
I know…
you wanted to be the safe harbor.
The warm light.
The patient hands that stayed and stayed and stayed
until their terror turned to trust.
You wanted love to be stronger than their ghosts.
You wanted devotion to be enough.
But some storms are not yours to calm.
Some battles are not yours to fight.
Some healing is a holy thing that only the soul who is bleeding can choose.
No matter how tender your hands,
you cannot stitch a wound that someone keeps tearing open.
No matter how wide you open your arms,
you cannot carry someone who refuses to stand.
And love…true love…is not made from dragging.
It is not born from sacrificing your own becoming
at the altar of someone else’s fear.
When you stay too long in the rooms of almost,
you begin to doubt the walls of your own house.
You start questioning the floor under your feet.
You start mistaking your longing for need, your loyalty for loss.
You start believing that love must hurt to be real.
That devotion must be a form of disappearing.
But hear this
you were never asked to become smaller than your spirit.
You were never meant to be the casualty of someone else’s confusion.
You are allowed to want more than survival.
You are allowed to want the whole thing—
the choosing, the presence, the arms that do not tremble at the weight of you.
You are allowed to leave the places where love is an apology.
You are allowed to walk away
even if they are sad, even if they are sorry,
even if you can see the glimmer of who they might one day become.
You are not cruel for saving yourself.
You are not unkind for choosing a life where you are met in full.
You are not the rehabilitation center for other people’s fears.
You are the living, breathing, radiant home
for your own wild, beautiful heart.
~
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