This Is Why I Deserve Better Than You

Aug 17, 2017

You know where to find me on a Saturday night.

I’m sitting on the couch, all dressed up with nowhere to go, with nothing but the mind-numbing tick, tick, tick of the clock on the wall to narrate my night. I had started counting the ticks but eventually lost count. I could sit there for hours and not realize.

My gaze is locked on my phone that sits beside me. Here, I wait. I wait for a call. I wait for a text. I wait for a knock on the door. Yet, you’re not there. You don’t call, you don’t text, you don’t show up.

I wish I could say this was the first instance, but it’s becoming a weekly routine. You make plans, then seemingly forget you made plans, or something better comes up. I hear cars drive by outside the window behind me and every once in awhile, I hopefully glance out the window, hoping to see you driving down the street. But you don’t.

I’ll sit in the silence for a few more hours until the ticks of the clock eventually begin to lull myself to sleep, and then I’ll move to my bed where I’ll cry quietly to myself for an hour or so, or until I eventually fall asleep.

A few more days will go by and I won’t hear from you. At all. In fact, we won’t talk unless I’m the one to do it first. We won’t hang out unless I’m the one to initiate plans. And even then, it’s a gamble as to whether you show up.

I’m so confused. I don’t understand. You talk about me meeting your family and taking me to faraway places on adventures for just the two of us. You tell me aspects of your future, and I’m there. Future me seems very important to you, but present me doesn’t seem to be at all.

This is a cycle. It doesn’t end because I keep perpetuating it. I keep letting you get away with it, just like I had with all of the men before you. And when I finally get the balls to tell you how I feel and ask for more communication, you shut me out.

But it ends today, because I deserve better.

I deserve better than someone who never initiates plans or conversation. I deserve better than someone who can’t or won’t commit, and I certainly deserve better than someone who won’t put me first, ever. It shouldn’t be too much to ask for someone to invite me along when they make plans with their friends.

I deserve someone who looks at me like I’m the moon and the stars – someone who is willing to meet me halfway. I deserve someone who will text when they say they will and someone who will follow through on their plans and promises. I deserve someone who will never make me question where I stand with them and someone who will make me a priority in their life because they choose to.

I deserve someone who is afraid to lose me and will love me with every fiber of their being – someone who won’t be the reason for my tears and late night counseling sessions via text with my best friend and mother. I deserve more than going to bed feeling uncertain, unwanted, and sad.