You never loved me but I thought you did. I thought that love hurt because there was something wrong with me.
When you pulled away.
Watching your attention go to others and never onto me.
Every day going by without a word of encouragement from you to me.
I thought you loved me. There had to be something wrong with me.
I worked so hard to change; to become who you were yelling and shaming me to be. I spent so much time working to be who I thought you would love that I had no time to be me.
Eventually you silenced me, and I finally understood. I wasn’t worthy of thought or sound. I worked day and night doing all I could to be someone you would adore. You only ignored me further and the silence became more than I could bear.
I once again found my voice and the yelling and shaming started again.
One day I saw it clearly, you had never loved me and never would. This realization sent me into a grieving of all the lost years that would never be. The grieving brought me distance and healing and the distance brought me truth. The problem was me all along.
I spent my life working to change you. In my delusions I tried to make you love me and in my healing I realized I could only change myself. There was something wrong with me for thinking you could love me, for me to believe that I deserved a life lacking love. The realization that I degraded myself so severely to accept this life I had chosen was gut punching and freeing.
So I began. I began to care for me. To look at all these parts of me and love them. I realized I had rejected them the same way the people I chose in my life had been rejecting me. I started to care for them and hold them tight to me. Thanking them for protecting me and letting them know I was okay to continue on without them now.
It took me realizing it wasn’t me, that it was you, to realize how much of the problem was actually me. And so here I am every day seeking to be me. It wasn’t as hard as I thought to take a look and see who I had always been. To finally see myself through my own eyes and not through yours. This entire time living as a victim of you when I was always a victim of my own perception.
Your sins against me are your own to bear and now I will leave you with them. I walk away in peace and solitude with a voice that can shout from the mountains and echo through the valleys. I walk each step with a new found confidence and humility as I accept the shame of my past decisions. I can’t go back into the past as the me I am today, but I can live this moment and each one forward with new perceptions and a new life growing within my spirit.
It took seeing the truth and accepting that you never loved me, for me to finally love me.
Until Next Time,
Jill
