Deserving

“Some people feel like they don't deserve love. They walk away quietly into empty spaces, trying to close the gaps of the past.” - John Krakauer

Leaves crumble beneath my feet as I walk down the sidewalk on this fall day, falling from the trees and making me realize the irony that those leaves are dying and yet so wonderfully beautiful. Tragically beautiful, even. And I want to tell them, those leaves that are suffering so terribly for everyone to see, that they are beautiful, astoundingly beautiful, and that their beauty is leaving an impact on everyone that sees them.

This comforts me, a wave of comfort overriding my anxious soul. A shattered soul right now, feeling ultimately like a disappointment to the ones that love me the most, but also knowing that I hold immense worth and that I deserve so much more than to feel that way. I don't deserve to feel like a disappointment to the ones I love most, and it is unfair to me that the people I love the most would even be okay with making me feel this way. My heart aches because the deepest parts of my soul long to be known, long to be searched and filled with love by the people in my life, but I ache with emptiness because these deeper parts of me have been neglected for far too long. And, as a result, I have stood up and begun to try and fill them myself because I refuse to let them run dry, I refuse to allow them to become hardened and cracked; parched for attention and love. And I wonder if they see it, I wonder if they care. I wonder if they even know that with each comment, with each disappointed glance and neglected attempt to try and understand me as a person, they are repelling me further and further away. I'm trying not to be bitter about it, but it's one of those inevitable things where it hardens you, and your calloused heart has a hard time softening, thawing out and handing out compassion because I was never offered a well-deserved apology. Because I deserve to be treated like an individual. I deserve to be treated better than I have been.

So it's no wonder that I settle for boys of lower standards than I should. Can you blame me? Can I even blame myself? My heart has been hurt so deeply by so many people, all I want is for it to relished, adored, and loved. I know that is what I deserve, and yet I'm giving myself less than what I deserve. So, essentially I am calling myself desperate. And maybe that's the term that I deserve, I'm not sure. All I'm saying is that it is something I need to work on, something I need to channel and try not to resort to as a fulfillment, but it's hard not to. It's hard to hold out for someone to hold you so lovingly, to stroke your hand and tell you everything is going to be okay when I've been going it alone for so long. Because company is good and happiness is not real unless shared.

So I'm at a crossroads here of brokenness, and contrary to popular belief, I am not trying to repress the fact that I am broken, I am fully aware of it, and will openly admit it. I know. At least I know. But I'm just trying to sort things out in my life right now, trying to decide if I want to change course, and if I do what direction I want to go in. Do I want to try to please my parents by being confined to their unreasonable expectations, or do I want to settle into the arms of someone who doesn't deserve me? Of course I don't want either of these things but my heart begs for a little more love. It begs to be addressed for the pain it has faced and apologized to. So maybe the path is just to dust myself off, love myself, and fill these parts that ache to be filled. If not me, who else, right? I deserve better than the other options I have.