“We accept the love we think we deserve”

To Myself,

We accept the love we think we deserve.

I hold this phrase, heavy, in the palm of my hand, a quiet truth that cuts deeper each time.

I find myself in the arms of those who cannot hold me with the care I crave. I keep returning to men who cannot love me whole, while I turn away from those who just might, those whose love I am somehow too afraid to bear.

Why is it, I wonder, that I seek love only from the shadows of what I need?

This pattern, I see, is the echo of a wound I have yet to heal, a mirror of my own fractured worth. There is a voice, quiet but relentless, that insists I am not enough. Not worthy enough, not something enough, for a love that holds, a love that stays. And so I settle, again and again, for half-hearted promises, for hands that don’t reach back.

In my own doubt, I choose a kind of loneliness, because somewhere, deep down, I have let my insecurities draw the boundaries of my heart. But I want to unlearn this; I want to loosen these chains, let them fall. I want to believe that I am worthy of love,

not for a fractured part of me, but for the whole, raw, unpolished truth of who I am.

I will teach myself to recognize the love I deserve, a love that does not leave me questioning, that does not fill my soul with echoes. I will grow into someone who believes she is worthy, simply as she is.

And in that knowing, I will learn to open the door for love that meets me there.