The beast within me restored my inner peace

Chapter Two: Loving Too Deeply

The title of this chapter has me on edge. Knowing that I've been guilty of that more times than I'd like to imagine. Loving too deeply is both a good and bad thing in today's world. We say that the best people have the biggest hearts but those are the same people that go through the most pain. I once loved someone for almost a decade that only brought me pain. We argued for months on end, saw each other once every year, made plans throughout the year that got cancelled last minute, whilst the occasional "I love you" was thrown around as meaningful as a cup of water in the rain. Crazy thing about it? I still love that person more than any other person I've ever met. But knowing the way to love someone who's wrong for you yet keep them at a respectful distance in your life is a skill that took me 15 years to master. Unfortunately I am not an expert at it yet. Have you ever had that person that you knew treated you awfully, made you cry everyday and night, broke your spirit, tore you down every chance they got, yet they still mean a lot to you? If you answered yes, I sympathize and understand what you're going through. Detaching from someone who you know has the potential of being their best self but lacks the interest to take that step is really draining. You learn that everybody makes mistakes but how many mistakes does it take for a mistake to become a habit? I dated someone who would hurt me everyday, then apologized and told me they would change. Being in a serious relationship for the first time, I believed him and trusted that because of how much I loved him, he wouldn't do it again. A year later, I walked away completely detached and out of love with that person as if we had never met. The difference between the first person and the second? The first person only abused my mental health, which believe me was horrid, but they never took it physically. Then someone else did the same thing but he also showed me more love than person one and two. What do you do when you know someone is capable of being an amazing person but is so comfortable with the chaos that you have to leave for your own inner peace? You leave, right? Took me two years for that situation. As I said in the beginning, detaching yourself mentally and emotionally from someone is much more difficult than doing so physically. Keeping yourself from physically seeing them at a store or party is easy, but how do you convince yourself to take them out of the "Partner for the future" folder and put them back in the "Stranger" folder? Loving too deeply is something that can severely damage your inner peace. You become focused on making that person happy, adjusting to their ways of life, accepting everything terrible that happens, tolerating any distrustful people because of them, and technically building yourself into a completely different person in order to satisfy that person you're with and the people they surround themselves with. That is where loving too deeply can take you and it is a dark, awful, depressing, exhausting and regretful place to find yourself. Having the courage to pull yourself out of that situation and say "It will hurt like hell to leave but it will hurt even worse if I stay." There are the five stages of grief of course. Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. The bargaining stage is the worst. You try to figure out how you could make things work and try to come up with a game plan. If things are too screwed up for a plan B, it's not worth it to be making a Plan C. You have to keep in mind that I said loving too deeply had a bad side but it has a good side as well. You learn more about people and it makes you observant. It teaches you to take note of what people think about certain things and whether it's a good thing or not. You might learn that they hate children or that they only listen to music for the beat instead of the words where they scream "Apple juice" all the time. Never met anyone of either of those scenarios but I would most definitely not be interested in meeting them at all. These things help us in navigating whether we actually like the person that we're with. Loving someone is great and all but if you don't like them then everything will feel like a huge waste of time. Spending time with someone who is dating their phone instead of you when you're in person but their phones are non-existent when they're with their friends is a major red flag. Don't get me started on red flags. If we have to do an entire chapter of red flags then we will be here for a very long time. It's just that we tend to play colour-blind when it comes to red flags because of how much we have feelings for the person. Trust me, it's not worth it. Don't overlook red flags for temporary feelings. You deserve so much more than someone who isn't sure about you or making an effort to be with you. It's not difficult to show up. One of the biggest things about people who love deeply is that they will always do their best to show up but then they are always found with people who will not have the same courtesy to do that for them in return. Why does life have to be that way? We give a lot but then in return we get barely anything and call that "Love"... isn't that just sad. Putting a title on something for the sake of having a title isn't what life is all about. Neither is treating someone like they aren't worth showing up for. Some feelings are about to be hurt but hey, lessons need to be learned today.