The Pattern I Kept Repeating

The amount of times I’ve let myself be disrespected —
Disappointed, dismissed, overlooked —
Is honestly hard to believe.

And the thing is, some part of me knew.
Knew they were emotionally unavailable.
Knew the dynamic was familiar.
Knew I was chasing something I’d never receive.

But I still went after it.

Every time I tried to prove my worth to someone who couldn’t love me,
I was really trying to prove it to her —
To my mother.
The one who saw my need for love
and refused to meet it in a way that was real.

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🔁 Repetition Compulsion

They call it repetition compulsion — the drive to repeat an unresolved trauma
in hopes that this time, it’ll turn out differently.

But it never did.
Not in friendships.
Not in work dynamics.
Not in romantic relationships.

Every time I performed for love,
I abandoned myself.
And every time I was met with silence, criticism, or indifference,
It reinforced the false belief that I had to earn love by being more.

But I see it now.

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🧒 The Inner Child’s Last Hope

There’s still a naive part of me — a younger part —
who believes that maybe this time, if I get it right,
someone will finally see me and love me as I am.

But he’s been going about it in a performative way.
Trying to be good enough.
Trying to fix something that was never his to fix.

And that’s not the way.

Because what I truly needed all along
was someone to love me without the performance.
To meet me in my rawness, not my perfection.

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🪞 What I Know Now

I’ve had to learn this lesson more times than I would’ve liked.
But I trust those experiences were necessary.

Because now I see the pattern far more clearly.
And I won’t fall into it so easily again.

There’s a quiet kind of power in that —
A rebuilding of self-trust.
A deepening of my trust in the process.
In the idea that I can finally stop running after people who won’t stay.
And instead… stay with me.

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🔒 The Non-Negotiable

This lesson has repeated more times than I wanted.
But every single time, it’s brought me back to this truth:

I have no choice but to be authentic.
I cannot abandon myself anymore — because every other path ends in quiet misery.

No relationship is worth losing myself over.
No amount of connection is worth the cost of inner betrayal.

And even when I’m alone — when I feel like I’m walking through the world unseen —
if I’m standing beside myself, I’m not truly alone.

That’s where healing begins.
And where freedom lives.

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