B.
I think what hurts the most is knowing that I genuinely tried to be good to you. Not perfect, not without mistakes, but I tried in every way I knew how. I tried to understand you when you were difficult to understand. I stayed when leaving would have been easier. I forgave things that quietly broke parts of me. I learned how to love you in the ways you needed, even when you never stopped to ask what I needed in return. I gave you my patience, my time, my attention, my reassurance, and all the little pieces of love I had. I kept thinking that if I loved you sincerely enough, eventually you would see me the way I always hoped you would.
But somehow, no matter how hard I tried, I was never the version of me you could appreciate.
I could spend hours thinking about what I could have done differently. Maybe I should have been softer. Maybe I should have been more understanding. Maybe I should have asked for less, expected less, needed less. Maybe if I had been easier to love, you would have loved me better. I kept changing little parts of myself just to make things easier for you, until I barely recognized the person I was becoming. And the cruelest part is that even after all of that, I still somehow felt like I was failing you.
You never saw the nights I stayed awake wondering if you were okay. You never saw how many times I chose my words carefully because I was afraid of upsetting you. You never saw how often I put my own feelings aside just so you wouldn’t have to carry mine. You never saw the effort behind the smallest things because I never did them for recognition. I did them because I loved you. Because caring for you felt natural to me. Because somewhere in my heart, I genuinely believed that one day you would notice.
But I was always noticed when I made a mistake, never when I was trying my hardest.
You remembered the moments I fell short, but somehow forgot all the times I showed up. You saw the times I was tired and called it distance. You saw the moments I couldn’t be everything you wanted and forgot how many times I had tried to be. And slowly, I started believing your perception of me. I started looking at myself through your eyes and wondering, What is so wrong with me that even my best is still not enough?
That question destroyed me more than any goodbye ever could.
Because I wasn’t asking you to think I was perfect. I just wanted you to see that I was trying. I wanted you to recognize that behind every mistake was someone who was genuinely doing their best to love you right. Someone who was learning, growing, compromising, and constantly choosing you even when it hurt. I wanted to feel like my effort meant something to you. I wanted to feel like the love I gave wasn’t something you could simply accept, get comfortable with, and eventually take for granted.
Instead, I became someone who was always trying to prove that I deserved to stay.
And maybe that was my biggest mistake.
I kept trying to earn a place in the heart of someone I should never have had to convince. I kept giving more because I thought I wasn’t giving enough. I kept apologizing because I thought maybe if I took responsibility for everything, you would finally stop leaving. I kept lowering my expectations because I thought wanting the bare minimum made me difficult. I kept telling myself that love requires sacrifice, when in reality, I was the only one sacrificing.
I don’t think you realize how exhausting it is to constantly wonder whether you’re enough for someone you already gave everything to.
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There is a different kind of loneliness that comes from being with someone who makes you feel alone. It’s lying beside someone and still feeling miles away from them. It’s having someone to call but being too afraid to say what you really feel because you already know they won’t understand. It’s giving someone your whole heart while secretly wondering if they would even notice if you stopped giving.
And I think that’s what finally broke me.
Not that you left. Not that you chose something or someone else. But that for so long, you had me, and you still made me feel like I was something you could live without.
I wish I could say I regret loving you, but I don’t. I regret losing myself while trying to make you happy. I regret thinking that being more patient, more forgiving, more understanding, and more loving would somehow make you appreciate me. I regret every time I convinced myself that being hurt was simply the price I had to pay for keeping you.
Because I know now that I could have given you the best version of myself, and if you had already decided that I wasn’t enough, nothing I did would have changed your mind.
Maybe I was never difficult to love. Maybe I was just loving someone who had already stopped looking for the good in me.
And that is a painful thing to accept.
I hope one day I stop wondering what I lacked. I hope I stop replaying every conversation, every fight, every goodbye, trying to find the exact moment where I became unworthy of being chosen. Because the truth is, I was there. I tried. I cared. I stayed. I gave you the best of me, even on days when I had nothing left to give.
Maybe you couldn’t see it. Maybe you didn’t value it. Maybe to you, it was never enough.
But I know how hard I fought to love you.
And perhaps, someday, I’ll finally understand that being unappreciated doesn’t mean I was unworthy. Being left doesn’t mean I wasn’t enough. And someone failing to see my value doesn’t mean I had none.
I was enough.
I just wasn’t enough for you.
And as much as that sentence still hurts, I’m slowly learning that I don’t want to spend the rest of my life trying to become enough for someone who never knew how to see me in the first place.
