He does not love you back.

Warning: This is a rainy day post. We all need these sometimes.

When you love someone or something that does not love you back, you can persist forever, and yet - there is still no hope, no evidence that you will ever receive the validation you are pursuing. You will give and never receive; you will tear up anyone who questions why you are giving so much to a person who clearly does not love you. You will defend to the death that person who does not love you, putting up the prizepiece of your one-sided love on the family mantle for everyone to see: maybe it will convince them / you? But let me tell you: he does not, and he WILL NOT love you back.

2015 was a rough, rough year for me. That year, for me, did not end until I left my posting in Madrid in mid-2016. It was a year in which I came to grasp a crucial lesson in the life of a woman, once and for all: when a person you love does not love you back, the status is permanent. To this day, the memory of that year still haunts me; I am still working through what happened as a result of my choosing to stay all-in, rather than walk away. Yet, I don't pretend to think, even today, that I had a choice in the matter: that was where I was in life, and that person who didn't love me back was destined to make me experience and understand how utterly shitty it is to ruin yourself, your relationships, your body and mind - to run ragged the race you will never complete. The race that only exists in your mind.

I don't pretend to know how to walk away when I am all-in; however, as the old Destiny's Child song goes, "I'm a survivor." My survivor instinct has kicked in every.damn.time, saving my ass from certain destruction more times than I can count. But, ladiezz- we can't put all our worth into our ability to survive disasters: it's just an unkind, draining, and garbage way to treat your one and only self. (Plus, the Bounce Back bank doesn't give unlimited loans!) And so, these days, I do the delicate dance of pulling myself back from the edge as it draws nearer; resisting the urge to let love - my world view - swallow me into an alternate universe: a universe where no human can reach me, where my soul withers, where my body goes malnourished, but where my plastic smile stays on.

I see people around me who have fooled themselves into thinking that the love they give is the love they will receive back, a proposito, automatically - love of a partner, love of an icon, love of a political party, love of a certain world leader. Whether it is "we're all on one team" validation-generated love, or a love that grows under the artificial dim, smoky light of an ever-eluding validation-- it comes from that same, toxic landfill source, where tears and cigarette smoke are the comfort pad and where palpable love is absent.

I am grateful for the rawness of my innervisions (fave album)... the inner eye that has never been shielded from what is happening to and around me. There are so many people right now who are loving him, not realizing that in the end, he won't ever return the sentiment. You are not on his mind, and he doesn't give a fuck about you. I knew this all along with my 2015 situation, which is why I measured my hope to mere moments. I knew I could not win him and so I was able to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I could escape my toxic love by living with it, recognizing it for what it was, and for holding myself just a footstep from the edge. I feel genuine pity for those who will never realize, but only when it is too late, that their promise ring isn't coming - that if and when they fall off the cliff, his hand will not reach out to save them.

You are loved. Don't chase phantoms of greatness at the cost of staying human.