I tried so hard to give people what they never had. I poured my heart into broken places, believing that maybe, just maybe, my love could patch up their wounds. I tried to love the hurt out of them, to silence the echoes of their pain with the warmth of my presence. I tried to show them what safety feels like, the kind that steadies the soul and reminds you that home is not always a place, sometimes it is a person.
But then I learned something that shattered me and shaped me all at once, hurt does not leave simply because love arrives. Love, as powerful as it is, cannot erase scars someone has chosen to cradle. It cannot heal what someone refuses to fix. You can hold their hand, but you cannot force them to let go of what cuts them. You can build them a shelter, but you cannot make them walk inside.
That realization broke me, but it also freed me. I stopped bleeding myself dry on the altar of someone else’s healing. I learned that love is not meant to be a rescue mission, it is meant to be a partnership. Love is not about saving, it is about walking beside someone who is already choosing to save themselves.
So now, I love with open arms but also with open eyes. I give without destroying myself in the process. I hold space for others, but I no longer abandon myself for the sake of belonging. Because the hardest truth I have come to know is this, you cannot heal anyone who clings to their pain, and you cannot lose yourself trying to be the cure for someone who refuses to consume the medicine.
And that, in itself, is love too, choosing to love yourself enough to stop fighting battles that were never yours to win.
