“You deserve the love you keep trying to give everyone else.” ~ Bianca Sparacino

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It hurts.

This ache inside of you that longs to be given what you so effortlessly give others.

It seems that you love, you give, and you do constantly for others, yet still feel that you never quite get back what you give. But that is not the point of love. We don’t give to get—we give because of the sheer joy of it.

Yet you still wish that, for once, it wouldn’t be so hard or complicated. And though you don’t say anything, I know you wonder if it’ll ever be you, if someone will ever choose you who always changes your mind. I know you want to be confident in knowing that the love you receive isn’t about them; it’s about you.

You want someone to be there for you in all of the ways that you are for others, and it’s okay to feel that. Just because you give, doesn’t mean that you don’t have needs. Just because receiving isn’t the point of love doesn’t mean that we don’t desire it.

Life is a spindle that the hopeful are often pricked upon.

It’s a maddening game of what ifs, U-turns, change, and gambling in the pursuit of something you can’t quite see. And in the end, all most of us want is someone to remind us why it’s worth it.

But let me save you some time and heartbreak: that person is yourself.

See, there’s a contradiction within non-attachment and authenticity. It’s that we can need but still give space, we can hope but still hold joy, and we can want but still be satisfied. The truth is that the longer you keep waiting for someone else to fill your open spaces, the longer you will be chasing that love out of your life.

No other person in the world—not your lover, soulmate, or even twin flame—can make you feel satisfied or fulfilled if you first haven’t first done that for yourself.

So yes, you do deserve the love you keep giving to everyone else. But are you giving it to yourself?

We can give and give of ourselves to others, but if we aren’t first filling ourselves up, then no one else will be able to either. It is not our partner’s job to love our broken pieces back together; it’s not their job to fix us or to quell our insecurities.

It’s their job to simply be our constant—but only if we have signed up to do the work as well.

You do deserve the love you give away to so many—but you also deserve to love yourself in exactly the same way. You need to take care of yourself as you do those who you value the most. You need to put your heart first—your wants and your desires.

Remember it’s not selfish—it’s self-love.

There is a difference, and don’t let those who haven’t mastered this try to convince you otherwise. People will only know how to love you once you have learned how to love yourself, because whether you intend for them to or not, they will only be able to follow your example.

You are not a martyr of love.

It is not your job to sacrifice everything you are in the hopes of getting what you need. Love is amazing, and so is finding our peace within this crazy world, but nothing can replace the feeling of knowing that the only place your self-worth lies is within you.

You deserve the amazing, the toe-tingling, the once-in-a-lifetime, but if you keep expecting that it will make that ache go away, perhaps you’re being given these challenges for a reason right now. Maybe you are being asked to simply fall in love with yourself so that you learn once and for all the person who deserves your love the most is you.

There’s a beauty in learning that you are, in essence, all you’ve been searching for because then it can never be lost.

This isn’t to say that another won’t complement you or make you stronger, as that is the whole point of partnerships. But in order to be able to do that for another, you need to be strong on your own. You need to have let your roots grow firm and steady into the earth such that the strongest storm could not shake who you really are.

Maybe there will be a day when you suddenly realize this. Perhaps it will occur when, once again, you feel like you were wronged. However, the truth is that being wronged is only a matter of perception, of what we allow, and of what we want to entertain as our truth.

If we truly can accept that how others treat us says more about them than us, then we also will realize how we treat others has more to do with who we are than anyone else in our life. There’s no dignity in being a doormat—no one ever gets anywhere by accepting anything, rather than holding out for everything.

The only choice you have to make is if you can actually handle getting everything you say you want.

Sometimes, it seems that we both simultaneously desire and fear our innermost wants. It’s almost as if it’s easier at times to not get them so we can continue to have something to complain about, to have a reason to struggle.

Well, what if we gave up the struggle?

What if we decided to simply give ourselves everything that we so readily give others?

To accept that there is no lack but the one that we perceive?

We just may find that in the end, all the love we had hoped to receive was only ever ours to give ourselves.

Author: Kate Rose
Image: Pixabay
Editor: Callie Rushton