They’ve made you feel complicated.

You are too much and not enough at the same time. It seems that the ones we love are always leaving us behind for someone else. Or else they’re not able to handle our strength. Perhaps they leave us and try to hurt us on their way out, hoping that lessening our strength will somehow boost their own. Or perhaps we leave them, learning finally that they have only tried to suppress our light with their fears and insecurities. But the story ends the same, it seems: we love, we lose, and we grieve all those lost might-have-been futures.

There are so many lovely metaphors that people pass around to encourage people like us. The mud that the lotus requires to bloom. How we’re not buried but planted like seeds that will bloom. How instead of falling we can dive or instead of drowning we can swim. They are lovely, but when we’re struggling with the weight of yet another failed relationship, they don’t always give us what we need which, of course, is hope.

We hope that there’s someone out there who will be strong enough to handle our raw, authentic selves without trying to mold us into a new shape. We hope that we’ll one day stop falling for people who only fear the fire rather than seeing all of our beautiful light. We hope we can get over the people we’ve loved who could never love us in the way that we need. We give ourselves so much love and hope that one day someone else will love us as well as we love ourselves. We have so many hopes.

But right now, we feel complicated. Too much. Not enough. Never, ever enough. We’re sad and frustrated, with that razor edge of anger that we can’t have a love that loves us back without that added element of angst that seems to always come with it. Our wants and needs are simple, but we’re told that we aren’t. We’re not simple.

But that’s the mistake.

There’s nothing complicated about having thoughts and feelings. Some people just aren’t brave enough to face themselves, much less to face us.

There’s nothing complicated about being who we are. Some people wear so many masks that they can’t fathom how we’re so comfortable without wearing any.

It’s not complicated to love someone straight out and to say it. Some people are used to games being played, and they aren’t comfortable when those rules no longer apply.

It’s not being complicated to love ourselves and hold fast to our own standards. Some people have spent their lives adjusting their standards to get what they need rather than meeting their own needs and waiting for the right person to come along.

We’re not complicated because someone else couldn’t understand us. They probably don’t know themselves that well either.

It’s not us. It’s them.

Of course, they want to make us feel complicated! If it’s our fault, they never have to look too closely at themselves—a thing that only the brave can do. It’s not that we were too much or somehow not enough. It’s that they couldn’t handle that version of themselves reflected back to them which is their problem and not ours.

We’re not complicated. We haven’t been loved by the right hearts. Yet.

~ 

Author: Crystal Jackson
Image: @Gypsieraleigh Instagram
Editor: Angel Lebailly
Copy & Social editor:  Sara Kärpänen