Persevering Paige

This experience of being left when I was completely in love has been every emotion in the book. I have gone through every emotion I have ever felt in life, multiple times. It is the definition of an experience that ebbs and flows; constantly changing and shaking the one who goes through this. It has been awful. It has been eye-opening. It has been strangely refreshing, in all of the worst ways. I have come to some powerful realizations.

This is what I have come to.

You cannot make someone love you. You cannot make someone appreciate you. You cannot make someone see all the sunshine and beauty that you are. So if someone you love chooses to leave, remember that you cannot make them stay. You have to let them walk away if they so choose. It is one of the hardest things you will do. It helps to remind yourself that you just have to let them walk away from beautiful people, and let them live without them.

Branching off of my last point, this tsunami of emotion and pain that I’ve been experiencing has helped me understand how much I am truly going to appreciate when I do fall in love again, and that person doesn’t leave me. It has made me realize how amazing that time and person is going to be; when they see all that I am and how much I love them, and they make sure they don’t lose me. I am going to appreciate it a thousand times more because of this profound heartbreak.

When you experience any kind of rejection or someone leaves you in any way, shape, or form, it’s often tempting to ask yourself why you weren’t good enough. “Why wasn’t I good enough for this person? Why wasn’t I good enough for this situation?” That kind of rhetoric must be extinguished. You weren’t left because you lacked adequacy. Painful situations don’t arise because of anything you lack. I’m an English major and a Fitzgerald quote I like a lot keeps coming to mind. I have never necessarily read it and thought of it about myself. I don’t think about literature in such a shallow sense as to relate it to me. But lately I have been reading it, and it’s just hit a part of me that is settling, in a way. “She was beautiful, but not like those girls in the magazines. She was beautiful, for the way she thought. She was beautiful, for the sparkle in her eyes when she talked about something she loved. She was beautiful, for her ability to make other people smile, even if she was sad. No, she wasn’t beautiful for something as temporary as her looks. She was beautiful, deep down to her soul. She is beautiful.”

The last thing I want to bring up that this experience has taught me, is that I cannot give away my heart fully. I, sadly and unfortunately, need to hold a decent size of it back. I love too deeply and when I hurt, I hurt with everything I have. So for my own protection, I will hold a piece of me back until I’m certain I can give my whole heart away. You can never be too certain, obviously… but until I’m certain enough that I can.

You have been through much worse than this. Even though that fact works both for and against the healer, it is true nonetheless. Remember that you are worth more than you give yourself most of the time, and maybe this is life’s way of giving you the best.

With love,

Paige Alexandra