04/09/2026
I used to think that if I loved someone hard enough, consistently enough, patiently enough, I could become the reason they finally chose to show up.
I believed this about a friend. A partner. A parent. Maybe all three, at different chapters of my life. I believed that my steadiness could heal their inconsistency. That my reliability could become a mirror they would eventually want to look into. That if I just held on long enough, with enough grace, with enough understanding, with enough of myself quietly poured into the gap their unreliability kept opening, they would see it. See me. And stay.
What I did not understand then, and what cost me years I cannot get back, is that I had confused love with audition.
Every time they disappeared and came back, I was grateful. It felt like confirmation and proof that I was enough to return to. Every inconsistency I absorbed without complaint was me presenting my credentials. Every time I swallowed my hurt and smiled and said it's okay, I understand, I was making my case.
Working for something that should have been freely given. Competing, in a contest I had not agreed to enter, for the basic dignity of being treated as someone worth showing up for.
But now I see that their inconsistency is not a code I am supposed to crack. It is not a test I am supposed to pass. It is not a wall I am supposed to find the door in through sheer devotion. It is information. Plain, uncomfortable information about what they can offer, about the gap between who they want to be for you and who they actually are right now.
So you see, stepping back is not giving up. It is not a failure of love or a failure of nerve. It is the first genuinely loving thing you can do, for them, because you stop performing a function that prevents them from facing what they actually need to face, and for yourself, because you stop haemorrhaging energy into a wound that is not yours to close.
It is the moment you stop auditioning and remember that you were never supposed to be on that stage in the first place.
And that for me is closure.
~ The Book Therapist
If you made it this far and it resonated 👍🏼❤️🗨↗️
