work in progress

if you give unconditional love
to an abusive asshole
you will get abused by them

seriously
at some point it's not about the kind of forgiveness
that enables the cycle to continue anymore,
and becomes an issue of loving yourself enough
to not put up with their harmful behavior.

love by itself isn't enough to make a relationship work,
especially not when one (or both) partners won't even try.
and it's not easy, to walk away from everything
you put into it trying to make it work, feels like failure,
like if you could have tried just a little bit harder,
or if you could have loved them just a little bit more, maybe...

but maybe doesn't count
because unconditional love is that kind of trap
that abusive assholes love to use
to manipulate their victims.
no matter how much they blame you,
or the alcohol, or the drugs, or their parents,
or their job, or their social status, or whatever the fuck
they gotta blame somebody or something else,
it's not your fault they're like that.
it's not your job to fix anybody else.
that's all on them. you can't help.

your love,
no matter how much you love them,
it isn't enough.
it only enables more abuse.

so if love were a choice,
why would we do this to ourselves?

i don't think you get to choose love,
you either feel it or you don't.
like all the other feelings,
maybe even moreso than the rest,
it isn't rational, you can't rationalize it,
it doesn't make sense.
that doesn't mean it isn't valid.

sometimes
when you love somebody too much,
they take it for granted you always will,
no matter what they do.
sometimes
you wish that were true,
sometimes it just isn't.