Let Her See Real Love

By Anonymous

I don’t know if I was or wasn’t the girl who was fancied everywhere she went just by being herself.

I don’t know if I wasn’t. I wouldn’t know.

She was far too preoccupied with feeling not enough. She pretended not to care but it’s all she ever did.

It didn’t start out that way but as the years went on it became all she knew.

Desperately sheltering herself from the pain and abandon she knew was coming. Caught between compliments and pick up lines, boys obsessing over her, stares that lingered, and her own world of never quite feeling enough. Woman enough. Feminine enough. Sexy enough.

Sure, that version of me did get compliments from strangers, friends, admirers. Probably even more than I recall. Girls, boys, but never from herself, which over time was replaced by a loyalty to the men who loved her.

It was like she was indebted to them.

Over the years, the compliments were only about her skin so they never sunk in. Transient. And again. They just hovered over her already hollowed self image.

I don’t know if it was the fact that she felt like her beauty belonged to other people, like it was something they just wanted to reach out and touch. Like they couldn’t help themselves that she didn’t want anything to do with it. Her body, but like it was no longer hers. Not listening to it for too long.

A war that dragged on.

I wish I could’ve told her it was nothing to do with her, only the side of men she never really knew. The side marred by greed.

I wish I could tell her that it doesn’t matter what they want or how they make you feel if it isn’t what you want.

It only matters what you want.

The only compliments which will ever become a part of you are the ones you let yourself believe. Reclaim them.

Start pouring the love you gave others into you. It only matters what you do for yourself now.

A cycle I broke.

A moment of clarity.

There’s still that little girl inside of you. She’s waiting for you to love her like you promised you would. Let her see real love.