Something I know for sure, but still makes me ache in a places I thought I killed off long ago is this: you cannot make people see your worth, want you, care about you, love you, or even need you.

Reminding them you are there if they do not care only harms yourself. Putting more energy into showing you care about them and their place in this world, and yours, cannot force them to see you. That brilliant and beautiful saying by Maya Angelo will always ring true, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them (the first time).”

I have been struggling with my ego and abandonment issues all week. My logical brain, the one that knows truth and reason, can see I am right where I need to be. That the choices I have made to protect myself and stay sacred are for my highest good. My heart though… my heart is on some straight bullshit. Yelling, crying and screaming. Telling me I will never be loved. That I always give too much. That I am too much. That I will never be chosen. I am not worthy of being chosen.

My heart is loud, and has had me in tears for days, telling me that I wasn’t worthy as a child and I sure as hell am not ever going to be worthy now that I’m old. She, my heart, gives until she is in complete exhaustion and then doesn’t understand that sometimes the people we give to don’t care, didn’t ask for anything, and have other plans. She has always been too deep and complicated for most anyway.

What do we do when our heart is broken for years? When we don’t have any one good reason to justify our crying jags other than we keep thinking the best of people that don’t even think of us? What do we do when we hold hope for people and things so tightly that that hope itself is toxic?

Our lives continue on in patterns if we let them. I chose to break my own patterns 6 years ago when I chose to be single, and that hasn’t even stopped the heartache. It remains. A constant struggle between myself and my mind to tell myself that I am worthy of love, of respect, of being chosen. And that all of that has to start with me.

Chosing me means letting go of any hope of ever loving you, or someone like you… because you, you have already shown me who you are.