✨tired✨

And I think kids should be taught that this isn’t just fine and normal, but that you totally can - and actually should - romanticise it. Because since there’s nothing else you can do about that sort of thing, you might as well have fun having it. You do get to be the the Tragic Suffering Protagonist about it. It’s a beautiful, keen and unique sort of pain that is your own personal tragedy and 100% a you problem.

The idea that the only acceptable outcome of falling in love with someone is a relationship with the object of that desire is genuinely dangerous. The idea that the only way to a happily ever after is to “win them over”, get out of the friend zone, finally do some feat that’ll impress them or prove your worth and finally get the girl. That’s not how it works, that’s not how any of this works.

Moping isn’t inherently bad for you. Okay of course it’s possible to spend too much time wallowing in self-pity, but it’s good for you to indulge in it as needed. The difference between poison and medicine is dosage, and everyone is allowed to have a little bit of small personal tragedy sometimes, as a treat. You have to do it sometimes just to get it out of your system, be sad about something for long enough to simply get bored of that, and go do something else.

And not to get “A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down” stuck in your head, but sometimes that’s the key to it. If the only way to go through something is to suffer through it, might as well make it sweet. Sometimes you just gotta be like “I love her and her happiness means more to me than my own, and she does not want me, so therefore I must do this Noble Sacrifice and suffer in silence and simply let her be happy without me” for like six months or a year until you’re done being like that and over with it.

we were friends, and he loved me as a friend while i was absolutely head over heels crazy about him. i was very young, and convinced that if i just waited, one day he’d break up with his girlfriend and realize he was supposed to be with me. when they got married, i was absolutely fucking crushed.

however, i never once blamed him for it. i never once thought, oh i should have tried harder, i should have done something more to make him fall in love with me too. i didn’t choose to fall in love with him, and i knew he couldn’t just choose to fall in love with me. he loved her, that’s just how it was, and i had to respect that. my feelings were, indeed, 100% a me problem.

with the distance of years, i can see now that he and i wouldn’t have worked together. and honestly, i’m glad that he’s happy with her, i really am. he’s an amazing person and he deserves to be happy. loving him meant letting him go.

i still think of him fondly, but i had to distance myself from our friendship when he got married and i knew there wasn’t any more hope, that i didn’t want to be in love with a married man. and if there’s any advice i can give to anybody who might end up in this awful situation, it’s that no matter how much it hurts and how much being around them brings you joy, know when to walk away. know when to stop hurting yourself with hope.