TO BE LOVED LESS

When you are loved less, it brands you with a feeling of insecurity that can strike you as hard as a five fingered slap. When you are loved less, you give more, you try harder and you lose more. When you are loved less, your memories are more defined. Every word from the person you love more takes on a new meaning and you remember things that they easily forget. When you are loved less, you have no control. When you are loved less, you hold on to every last bit even when your relationship is breaking. You beg, you plead, you cry; you panic, because if this person who loves you less leaves you, what does that say about your heart and your soul and all of the pieces they will take with them when they leave?

After they leave you, you will look in the mirror and not recognize the person staring back at you. You will be in shambles. You will realize that you spent so much time trying to get someone to love you back that you will have wrecked yourself to your core. You won’t know what to believe in anymore, you will not find a comfort to your aching.
When you are loved less, pain can linger so long that it becomes a part of your bloodstream; constantly flushing you with an anger that peels away at your insides until every day you wake up with a sorrow so fierce that it feels like acid is seeping into the lining of your body. You will become a shell of who you were before you loved someone more. 
The person who loved you less will leave you easily but will leave a mark on your soul that lasts forever. When you love someone more than they love you, you are constantly scrambling for scraps, you are consistently heartbroken because deep down you know; You know that this person will leave and you will do anything for them to stay, even if it means settling, even it means losing yourself, even if it means losing everything. 
When you are loved less, you will learn what it means to hate and you will spin yourself a web of delusion from which you may never recover. You will learn what it means to hurt all the way to your bones. You will cry until your insides bleed because you have been cut in the deepest part that no one can see or feel except for you. 
The person who loved you less can define you for the rest of your life, if you allow it. The pain they caused you will leave an imprint you can’t scrub out completely but over time you learn that your capacity to love more will always outweigh the easiness of loving less. 
That person who didn’t love you as much as you loved them told you lies that you ended up telling yourself. They told you that you weren’t good enough, they told you that you should be sorry for things you couldn’t help, and they shamed you for caring so deeply that it consumed your world like fire. Love like that adds heaviness to your heart that hangs like smoke.
When you are loved less, you may turn into someone else, you may make yourself look like a fool, but then, you will learn to find yourself in the debris that is left behind. You will know what it means to be hallow, what it means to be broken, but you will also begin to learn what it means to have hope for forgiveness and for absolution. You will learn what it means to have hope for a peace that will dull the pain the rests in your bones, that heals the parts of yourself that you thought you had lost, that settles the dust that shadowed your strength.