Selenophile.

Believe them

Believe them again when they tell/show you again

Know that this has nothing to do with your worth or how much you can be loved

Don’t continue behaving like nothing has changed

Be real with yourself: you know this person can’t give you what you want, and they know they can’t give you what you want - if you disrespect yourself sticking around in the same dynamic with this person when you want something different, then you will also feel disrespected by them

If you think you have a lot to offer and hope that they can see that… then know that no matter what they think you can offer or bring to the table, their perspective of you may be different (for any number of reasons!)

In other but similar words, if you think you have a lot to offer (“why don’t they value me?” or similar), and they still don’t want it while you keep trying to pursue/convince/chase/prove yourself, then both of you are losing respect for you

You can feel love for a person, and that person can also be not right for you simultaneously

It’s okay to change the dynamic of the connection, if you are truly okay with it (maybe you have to take space to be okay with it instead of ending the relationship all together)

Don’t ignore your needs/feelings for something that’s not real no matter how much that person means to you - it is self-abandonment and self-harm, it prevents you from breaking this cycle

You are rejecting yourself by allowing yourself to be in a misaligned connection

is this our new lives, then? is love scripted? i have a dandelion heart and some part of me wants to believe that AI will not obtain self-reliance by evil but instead by discovering the single perfect shape of love - the one thing humanity (in all our time and force) could never quite nail down. maybe it will be a string of numbers. the imprint of static, the universe's thumbprint. maybe it will just be a single long mirror, and jam dripping down your hands.

i know there are "good" reasons. i was nervous! or i was unsure how to say it! but - i want your nervous words. i want your unsure words. i want you to strike entire pages of work for me. i want you to gesture vaguely, to ransack your mind for ways to instead-of-saying just show me. i want to find where your words fail you and where the summer of your longing blazes out of you, infinite, resisting the capture of definition.

and i want to do the same for you. isn't any love worth a little bit of struggle? i want to shiver with the movie-ripe sense my friends are lovely and i am so tender towards them - i want to never quite be able to explain what it means to spend my life with them. i want to draw shapes on your skin that exit the geometric and fade into the same, wordless pattern. it is still love if silent. you know - i rarely, if ever, actually tell my siblings i love them? i just show up often, and hope the action does the talking.

i know AI is "easier". of course. buttoned up and seamlessly corporate. but i do not want to love you through a film. i do not want to love you with your edges sanded down. i cannot recognize myself in you if you are unmarred and glistening. something about how, with the crystal-clear mp3 files of the present, we ache for the scratch of vinyl. the flaws are what make love worth it. i want the raw and the windbeaten and the unkempt.