If I do not give it my all, what is this heart for then? I would have given it to you it in a plate have you been patient with me. I would have offered you myself slowly, cautiously then all at once. I would have tried to break all barriers in order for you to love me. I would have been ready to risk it all and fly miles and show up at your door if you told me to. We are living on borrowed time and I don’t want to have regrets when it comes to loving the person I choose to love. When I was a child I told myself that if I found the person worth fighting for then I would bend and break and beg. That’s how much I love. That’s how much I will love had you just let me in.

I’ve been laughed at for crying over a man I only met briefly. Maybe they were right. But for me those brief conversations with you made me feel a connection to a soul even miles away. I felt a tenderness so raw. You will have my heart and a part of it even if we no longer talk. And as I have told you, I am scared of you forgetting me. Or me forgetting you. It’s impossible for me to forget because I remember every face that comes into my life.

But thank you for leaving me because I realized, I deserve this kind of loving too. I realize now that your words telling me to stick to my self-worth are not cruel but rather a stunning reminder. I begged for you to not leave because I loved you. Yet I haven’t begged my own self to stop crawling back to you when you have not texted for three weeks and I kept reaching out to you. I cried tears for you but I haven’t cried for that version of me pathetically begging a man to stay.

I have come back to reading because you broke my heart and I wanted to forget the pain. The child in me came alive when I began browsing through titles in that rundown thrifted bookstore again. It had been ages since I felt that way.

As an act of love for myself, I will be careful in pouring out my heart to people who wouldn’t give a shit if I bleed my eyes out in front of them. I would no longer hand my heart out to people who will not be capable of holding it. I will no longer bend my knees for the person who can easily choose with finality to walk away from me.

Would I still give it my all? The tender ache in my heart tells me never again. I will no longer keep on breaking my own heart.

As a final act of love for you, my dear, I would bend my knees in prayer and in supplication that wherever you may be, you will be safe and sound. That you finally realize you deserve to be loved. That you realize I was offering something beautiful. And when you do, come back to me.