Call It What You Want

by Alissa DeRogatis

I think the worst part was realizing that somewhere deep down, I knew it the entire time. I knew he wouldn’t be able to get where I wanted him to. I just hoped that I was wrong.

No, we never dated. He’s not an ex-boyfriend. He’s an ex-almost. Maybe that’s all we’d ever be—an incomplete sentence or a book that someone put down halfway through and never picked back up, finished without an ending.

was willing to do it whenever and wherever because I thought it would make him love me. I was desperate not to be alone. Spoiler alert: sex never makes someone love you.

Life got so much better when I stopped looking for love in every guy I met.

How could I get him to see that it should be me?

And while I didn’t love what was going on between us now, I wasn’t ready for it to end.

could be the one if he just let me. I couldn’t change his mind though. You can’t love someone into changing—you shouldn’t have to. I knew that. So why didn’t I believe it?

How was I able to fall in love with someone who wasn’t sure about me? What was so wrong with me that every time I got close to love, it ran from me?

If I knew loving him would have hurt this badly, I would’ve never laid my eyes on him.

I didn’t care that I was settling for a fraction of a relationship with him when I knew I deserved so much more. I was willing to settle for whatever he would give me, because a fraction of him was better than nothing at all.

I wanted to make him realize that I was more than enough.

mark. How could someone I did nothing but love do nothing but hurt me in return?

That night I realized that losing someone doesn’t necessarily mean losing. Every time someone walks out of your life, someone new eventually walks into it. Losing someone means you’ll eventually gain someone even better.

I deserved so much more than you were ever willing to give me. So why did I used to think that I wasn’t deserving of any of it? I thought I wasn’t worthy of love, and I feel so sorry for the version of myself that believed otherwise.

I didn’t want this to be a lesson; I wanted it to be love.