WITH NO ONE. FOR NO ONE. BELONGING TO NO ONE.

There comes a moment when we realise that some things should never have to be negotiated.

Our peace, for example.

Our dignity.

The way we want to be treated.

For a long time, we confuse love with effort. We think there is something beautiful about insisting. Trying one more time. Explaining ourselves better. Giving another chance. Waiting a little longer.

As if loving someone deeply were enough to make two people work.

It isn’t.

There are relationships in which we slowly give away small parts of ourselves without even noticing.

First, we change the way we say something to avoid an argument.

Then, we stop saying what we feel because we know it will cause a problem.

Later, we begin accepting behaviours that, from the outside, we would never advise someone we love to tolerate.

And one day we look at ourselves and realise:

I never wanted to become this person.

The person who measures every word.

Who interprets silences.

Who waits for messages.

Who searches for explanations for something that, deep down, is already hurting her.

I don’t want to be with anyone simply because I’m afraid of being alone.

I don’t want to change myself for anyone just to fit into someone else’s idea of a relationship.

And I don’t want to belong to anyone so completely that I stop belonging to myself.

Because love shouldn’t mean losing space within your own life.

It shouldn’t require one person to make themselves smaller so that the other can feel comfortable.

It shouldn’t make us spend more time trying to figure out whether we are loved than simply feeling that we are.

There is an enormous difference between fighting for a relationship and constantly fighting to make someone want to be in it.

The first can be love.

The second is often just exhaustion.

And perhaps growing up also means understanding this:

there are people we can love deeply and still be unable to continue walking beside them.

Not because they stopped mattering.

But because, somewhere along the way, staying beside them would require us to abandon too much of ourselves.

And there is also a sentence we repeat far too often when we are trying to justify someone:

“Deep down, they’re a good person.”

But we’re not drilling for oil.

Goodness shouldn’t be buried miles beneath the surface, hidden underneath hurtful behaviour, words that don’t match actions, and endless excuses.

Goodness should be visible on the surface.

In the way someone treats us when they are angry.

In the way they end a difficult conversation.

In the responsibility they take after hurting someone.

In the empathy they show when they have nothing left to gain.

Because it is very easy to seem good when everything is going well.

It is when something stops being convenient that character really begins to show.

And I no longer want to live on potential.

I don’t want to love who someone could be while suffering because of who that person actually is with me.

With no one.

For no one.

Belonging to no one.

I want to love without disappearing.

I want to stay without having to beg to stay.

I want to choose someone who chooses me too — not only when they miss me, not only when it is convenient, not only when they are afraid of losing me.

I want reciprocity in the present.

Because in the end, before belonging to any story, any relationship, any person…

I have to continue belonging to myself.