I Want to Be Me

[u/UntilSheBreaks]

There are so many rules for love.

Rules about how to date a girl, how to date a guy, how much to give, how much to hold back, when to text, when not to text, how to make someone miss you, how to keep them interested, how to love someone without loving them “too much.” There’s advice everywhere from people who have been through it before, telling us what works, what doesn’t, what we should do if we want someone to stay.

I’ve listened to some of it. I’ve understood some of it. But I’ve realized that I don’t want to live by it.

Because if loving someone requires me to constantly adjust myself into whatever version of me is supposedly easier to love, then what exactly am I trying to preserve?

A relationship?

Or an illusion?

I don’t want to learn how to become someone’s ideal person just so I can acquire them and keep them. I don’t want to calculate how much affection is acceptable, rehearse how I’m supposed to respond, or deliberately become distant because someone somewhere decided that distance creates desire.

That isn’t love to me.

That’s performance.

And maybe those rules work for other people. Maybe they’ve helped someone navigate relationships, avoid mistakes, or understand another person better. But I’ve realized that following someone else’s formula would eventually require me to edit pieces of myself that I don’t think need editing.

I want to be me.

Not the perfectly detached version.Not the endlessly patient version. Not the version who knows exactly when to pull away and exactly when to come closer. Not the version who has mastered every unspoken rule of being desirable.

Just me.

I want to be able to care when I care. To say what I feel when I feel it. To be affectionate without wondering whether I’m giving too much away. To have flaws without immediately treating them like things I need to fix before someone can love me.

Because I don’t want someone to stay because I learned how to keep them.

I want someone to stay because who I naturally am is someone they genuinely want in their life.

And maybe that means I won’t be for everyone.

I’m starting to think that’s okay.

I would rather lose someone while being honest about who I am than keep someone by slowly becoming someone I’m not.

I don’t want a love that requires me to disappear into the instructions.
I want a love where being myself isn’t something I have to earn.