The puzzle that was never yours to solve

There's a special kind of exhausted that comes from trying to earn love like it's a merit badge.

I think, you know the one. You show up early, laugh at jokes that aren't funny, and text the perfect amount — not too much, not too little, always calibrated, like you're defusing a bomb instead of just talking to someone you like. Familiar, huh?

You change your hair, your hobbies, your tone of voice, hoping that this time, this version of you, will finally be the one that gets noticed.

Here's ladies, the plot twist that nobody ever tells you: this whole thing was never ever a puzzle. You just kept treating it like one!

Puzzles have solutions, and puzzles reward effort — you put in the work, the pieces click, and you get the picture you were promised.

But people, especially the ambivalent, distracted, permanently-busy kind, are not puzzles. They're weather. And you cannot solve weather. You can only stand in it and wonder, eventually, why you're soaked.

Let's talk about the other person for a second, because they deserve a little spotlight too, though not the flattering kind.

They were always just about to have time for you — next week, after this project, once things calm down. Their phone was a more consistent presence in their life than you were, and somehow you were the one apologizing for "needing too much."

They weren't cruel, exactly, and cruelty would've almost been easier, because at least cruelty is a decision.

This was worse.

This was indifference wearing the costume of a busy schedule, someone who had all the time in the world for everyone except the one person standing right in front of them, holding out their whole chest and quietly saying, look, I'm right here.

And you, sweet, striving, hoop-jumping you, took their distraction personally. You made it about your worth instead of their capacity, and slowly you started thinking: if ONLY I were prettier, smarter, calmer, more interesting, less needy, more mysterious — insert your personal flavor of self-erasure here — they'd finally see me.

Without quite meaning to, you turned yourself into a science experiment with one hypothesis: maybe this time I'm enough.

I want you to know something, so stay with me: look, you were always enough. You just handed your "enough-ness" to someone who didn't have the equipment to measure it, and that's not a flaw in you. That's a flaw in the scale.

Ready for some snarky part? Stay with me for this too: you cannot earn a seat at a table someone refuses to set. You can bring your own chair, your own tablecloth, your own three-course meal, and they will still glance at their phone mid-bite. Bluh...

Some people aren't withholding because you haven't proven yourself yet — they're withholding because withholding is the whole relationship. It's not a phase you can outperform your way out of, no matter how hard you try.

Eventually, and this is the part that actually saves you, you stop trying to win. Not because you gave up on love, but because you finally understood the assignment was rigged from the start: wrong room, wrong timing, wrong values, wrong rhythm, two people who were never going to click into place no matter how many edges you sanded off yourself.

And the wildest part is that you weren't blind to your own worth this whole time. You were just holding it up to a light that didn't know how to shine on it. A diamond doesn't dim because someone left it in a drawer; it simply waits for someone who knows to hold it up to the sun.

The right person won't need convincing. They won't need a performance, a proof, a perfectly-timed text, or a new-and-improved version of you, because when they look at the exact same effort you were giving away for free, they'll just think: how did I get so lucky?!

So stop auditioning, stop solving, and stop mistaking someone's emotional unavailability for your personal failing. You were never the problem to be fixed. You were the prize the wrong person didn't know how to hold.

Let them go back to being busy. You've got a whole sparkling life to go be seen in! xoxoxo.
P.S. If you feel like you need to talk to someone because your situation is too unique and most of the stuff you read on the internet is too generic and not helpful, then I would personally like to recommend you this affordable online counseling service. You will not be disappointed.

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