You are not a storage closet. You are not a beaten up, bottom shelf that’s misused for someone to place their preferences on.
Sometimes we find ourselves entangled in other people’s lives that aren’t good for us just because we want to be wanted. It might be a valid explanation, but it is in no way a good justification.
Sure. You can tell yourself all you want that he really cared for you, that he was different, that he did and said all of those things because, at one point, he truly loved you, saw you for who you were, accepted your strange idiosyncrasies, and wanted you all the more for them. But a bitter and eye-opening conclusion is that sometimes we’re just the niche that people try to fit their hope into. He saw you as someone to enhance his life, someone he could project an image onto– I mean, it made sense: you are an intelligent, beautiful and confident human being and you chose him.
For all intents and purposes, you’re like Clementine Kruczynski from The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. You are mightily independent and don’t require anyone confiding in you as a main source of making your life worthwhile, and you also don’t expect anyone else to be that for you. Frankly, it’s an unhealthy and unstable way to live or go about relationships. Don’t be surprised when you look back at past relationships and discover that some people you once loved were irreplaceable to you. Even when you might as well have been anyone to them, just as long as you stroked their ego, reassured them that they are fully capable of hanging the moon, and that yes, they were absolutely worth their ultimatums — then, you were all good to go. I’d say this: Please do not feel pessimistic and skeptical of love because of one individual who does not deserve your over zealous and kind heart.
After thoroughly thinking through the experiences I’ve had with my own relationships and romantic encounters, along with those of others I’ve heard of or am acquainted with, let me relay how easy it is to be negative about love when you lose sight of your own clear, honest definition of it. It was easy, in the beginning, to catch myself evaluating some of these worries about what love was and how relationships were supposed to function, and how it upsets me that love can sometimes seem like mere chaos and ambivalence. I sometimes sigh, restlessly, seeing so many of the people I care for settle for less than they deserve or stay with people out of sheer convenience or necessity. Too many of the things that I’ve witnessed have been truly one-sided and based on shallow, fickle things. But when I find myself hearing these things and seeing these things, I’m (unfortunately) encouraged. Because that is not love, and it is not what we’re to be searching for.
And it’s as simple as that. Those things we settle for, those things we allow to keep happening just because it’s easier than ending them, those people whose affections we accept because we don’t think that we deserve anything more – that is not love. That is simply shoving our imagination through a narrow vessel in which it maneuvers, and eventually will sink.
Perhaps it’s impossible to find someone who really wants you, and not just the idea of you. Someone who loves you for the silly habits, the 12 am thoughts, and the roller coaster of an existence that you call your life. Or maybe it’s not. But there’s one thing I know more than ever at this time in my life, and that’s that I don’t want to be with anyone who ever uses me as a storage closet again, who needs me to complete his life, stroke an ego, or only exist for a brief moment of suitable time. I want to be something extra in someone’s life that he could undoubtedly live without, but chooses not to. Not because they need a place to store their sadness or joy or attachment, but because they know that I’m so much more than a shelf to put things on, and because they see the future and fearlessly want to run beside me towards the finish line with endurance.
The only kind of real love there is, is the love that makes both people better. The kind that grows and the kind that compliments the understood weaknesses of the other.