When You Try SO HARD to get someone to love you…and they CAN NOT
Traveling with Heart
Some people simply can not love and that is all we need to know to walk away and create love with someone who matters.
“Refusing to See…”
I thought…the first mistake.
Thought led to action…and now there were two.
I thought I could create the love I
needed to feel from you.
I would…
(I thought)
Earn it, produce it, conjure it, market it, form it and compose it.
I was…
(I thought)
Loving enough, special enough, deserving enough, self-less enough, gracious enough, and powerful enough.
I became…
(I thought)
Tireless, optimistic, hopeful, hard-working, diligent, and dogged.
I would create love for us both.
I would be God and Adam to your Eve,
with the rawest materials wrenched from me.
God rested.
I did not.
Until I found myself on my knees
begging in that kitchen one evening.
The tiles pushing upwards to counter
my spiral downwards.
Your palms in my hand as if
I could return you to the inside of me.
The ache in my side told me otherwise.
I had pulled rib and more playing God.
Eve became the catalyst in the garden,
and you became mine.
The apple I have tasted is bitter, too
poisonous to swallow.
For years I had a grimace upon my face
as I tried to force it back through
the throat’s folds,
But I simply regurgitate.
Fault so easy to lay across our barren land.
I thought…I thought…I thought…
But you can not love me and you never could.
The gates of my garden, in gracious sympathy,
close. I imagine myself, again, as Eve-
someone with a choice
and that is all the blessing I need.
This is a timely post for me. My husband is asking for one last chance and I don’t know what to do. I’ve often thought that he can’t love me the way I need.
Yes, as I wrote, you so want to love this person, but when they can’t return the love, you have to let them go. Otherwise, if you are like me you end up making yourself insane. Good luck.
Take care of yourself, my dear. Your story is so like a letter to my son’s exwife that I found while cleaning our his attic following his untimely death. He loved, and cared for her – she did not return the love or the caring.
God bless you.
Thank you so very much! That must have been a very painful letter for you to witness. The pain of another not loving us can be overwhelming, until we realize it was never our fault. I wish you well.
I am so blessed to have the chance to enjoy these masterpieces.
I wanted to quote here to highlight my favourite part of the poem, but then I realised I would end up highlighting all of it.
Your poetry and art have the philosophical and emotional power to literally change lives. Thank you so much.
Thank you so much! I was confronted with this tendency within myself to try to get others to love me- and sadly, some people just can not. I know this intellectually, but it does not stop those childhood patterns from revisiting me again
There aren’t very many poets that I appreciate who focus more on the line than on the stanza. This is generally because people who do this aren’t poets, they’re people expressing themselves poetically and in free verse because they live to write, breathe poetry or some such.
You are different.
Like a paragraph is or should be a complete thought, each of your stanzas are a complete thought. The stanzas simply hold the thoughts in your poetry, they don’t attempt to contain more than what is intrinsic to them and they do not attempt to mould the lines. The stanzas let the lines speak as they will. The lines form the stanzas independently, the guide the stanzas and not the other way round, and I appreciate seeing that done well.
Wow! Thanks for the compliment! I had never thought of things in this manner. Your words inspire me!
Yes, it is hard, isn’t it? And also sad to realize that the other person cannot be helped and will never know how wonderful it is to be loved and to love in return.
yes!! Especially if you have been taught to think otherwise- that your love can save everyone- it can’t….
Also very true.
I have tears in my eyes and heart, your writing is so very powerful and honest! I tried so hard for so long and let my ex-husband back into my life over and over and over again. i hoped that he would see me and recognize my compassion and love and accept it. He always choses his addictions and another women over me. I know I deserve better, someone actually capable of loving, instead of “using” people and calling it love. As I embrace self-love, laugh at my demons, embrace the now, acknowledge that I can get through to the other side of this last episode, it is words like yours that keep me sane and feeling safe. Many thanks for sharing your insight with the world.
I love what you write about “embracing your demons”- that is so wonderfully powerful!!! I am going to write that on a post-it and put it on my desk. Great image! I am so glad my words have helped you in some way. It is a very painful realization (usually after, like you, we have spent years trying) to finally understand that someone may simply be incapable of loving us- through no fault of ours. I wish you well