Love is (not) easy

“Why can’t I ever be enough for anyone?” I think to myself as tears stream down my face. It was Sunday night and I just got home from an extremely long day at work. As much as I wish I could be relaxing right now, I was spending the rest of my night crying on the bathroom floor. The bathroom floor felt icy against my bare legs and goosebumps began to form across my skin but I didn’t care. The bathroom floor has always been some kind of sanctuary for me, it’s my safe place and I feel the most comfortable letting out all of my emotions there. 

It all started when I was around five years old, whenever my father was around an argument always seemed to follow. I hated the screaming and shouting so I would run to the bathroom and hide because I felt the safest in there. Soon enough I started hiding in the bathroom when anything upset me and I felt like I couldn’t talk to anyone about what I was going through. Now here I am twelve years later at age seventeen having a breakdown over something that will drastically affect my relationship with my boyfriend. I didn’t want to believe what I was being told but I always had a gut feeling that this was happening. “It’s not real” I let out through sobs trying to convince myself that it was not true and that he would never do something like this to me. My sadness soon turned into anger. I hated him. I didn’t deserve this and he knew it. He didn’t care. “He never cared,” I whisper as I grab my phone and begin to text him everything that I had been told. His responses were all defensive and it made me more upset because I knew no matter what he did I would still stay with him. I was in love with him and I was willing to ignore and do anything just to call him mine. 

That’s the worst part about not seeing real love from your parents, it affects how you believe you should be loved. I never thought I would be the girl who stayed with someone who didn’t treat me right, in fact, I used to pity the girls who did. Now I'm here doing the exact same thing and feeling sorry for myself. A million different thoughts raced through my head as he walked into my room teary-eyed. “He has no right to be upset…I hope he’s okay” I think to myself. Seeing him look so upset made me angry but like I said I'm still in love with him so it also made me sad for him. I hated that I was causing so much pain for him even though I was the one with a broken heart. He sat at the end of my bed in complete silence for five minutes before I spoke up. “Look there's no reason for you to be here if you're not going to talk.” He contemplates and then says “You can do whatever you want but please just let me explain myself.” That's exactly what he did and even though everything that came out of his mouth was nonsense I told him that I wouldn’t break up with him. “If you want to be in a relationship with me you're going to have to change the way you treat me, and if that’s something you can’t do then I'm leaving.’’ He nodded before he began to apologize over and over again. I knew at that moment that If I wanted the love I deserved I needed to find someone who was willing to change their ways and be that love for me.