I used to think love meant staying long enough for things to finally become real. So I stayed through inconsistency, confusion and “almosts.”

And every time, I told myself the same thing. If I just loved harder, understood deeper, held on longer maybe we’d finally grow together.

But love can’t grow where only one person is building the future. And that’s what hurts to admit, not just the loss, but the realization of a pattern. You start to see it clearly. All the intensity, all the potential, all the “almost” moments, but never the steady kind of love where two people choose each other and build side by side.

For a while, that truth breaks something open in you. But eventually, it also frees you. Because it doesn’t mean you’re unworthy of real love.

It means you kept choosing someone who could only meet you halfway.

And once you see that, everything changes.You stop chasing “someday I’ll be chosen.” And you start choosing differently, looking for someone already capable of building beside you. Because real love will never ask you to carry it alone.

There Is No Place Like You: The Yellow Brick Illusion is available on Amazon.

Join the journey 💛 michele-natale