Stripping yourself open to someone is not a synonym for redemption.
It’s time to bow to the truth that being with someone who willingly reciprocates the love we give does not mean we are rescued. Although being saved is the familiar plot to every perfect fairy tale ever written, relationships will never be a free ticket out of our nightmares.
And while the reality that nothing will ever change unless we change is a hard pill to swallow, we should never burden the one we love with the idea of saving us. It’s not fair for us to hold them liable for fixing and healing the pieces they did not break, pieces that lay scattered and disintegrated far before they came along.
Let’s stop demanding that they fight our monsters and win wars we couldn’t. Love isn’t supposed to be chained to a responsibility or goal; that is, to get us out of the parts of ourselves we keep running away from. We never have to live up to the expectations we’ve seen from movies and books because our partners and friends cannot save us, at least not like that. Even if they go above and beyond bending, even if they create the perfect escape plan, it will not free us from all the dark places we have been to.
Love isn’t designed to work like that.
But it also doesn’t mean we have to feel every bit of hell in our bones, alone. If we have their heart, we should allow ourselves to fuel from the acceptance they channel. Believe in the burning sincerity set in their eyes when they say they are there for us. Feel the warmth of their patience and use that to find strength to outgrow and emerge from the withered parts of ourselves.
They may not be the answer to every question we ask at 3am while we lay breathless, trying to silence our muted sobs; they can be the subtle push we need to achieve that version of us we always envisioned. The bright reflection we see on our good days.
Because if our fragmented parts are ever truly embraced by those people we love, they’ll understand how much we need no saving. They’ll see how we, too, can be our own heroes. That instead of pushing us out of the dark or paving the way for us, they’d rather walk with us as we try and find our way. We’ll have them by our side, sustaining us, as we wander on that seemingly endless desolate road, no matter the length and distance they ought to stride with us. We’ll feel them rooting for us without the insistence of being the lifeline we must grasp on to for air, or the overestimation that they are the medication to the sickness we wish we didn’t have.
That way, when we win, when we finally find that route ours to take, we’ll know every inch of that victory is ours.
It’s okay to ask for help. We don’t have to deprive ourselves of the support they offer, but we shouldn’t cross the line at the extent of relying too much. Acknowledge the light they ignite in our abyss; but let us not depend our lives on that light because we might absorb every drop of it all — until nothing is left for them. Until the soul you labeled as your hero/heroine is engulfed by their own dusk because they are consumed, emptied.
Until you both try to keep making another light, but instead of creating a spark, you end up burning each other, seared and feeling unloved. Until nothing’s left in that darkness but to give up. Until you both accept defeat, and feel the shattering pieces of yourselves, lost in trying so hard.
Accepting help means replicating the fire in someone else’s light and not taking it away from them. There’s room for us to save ourselves without using other souls as bait. Heal, without destroying the hands that held our wounds as if they were the most beautiful part of our body, because they understood that’s where we were at our realest.
Replicate their light, but let’s not own it as if they were ours. Let’s learn to make our own fire, even if it means resemblance, that way when they leave, which I hope not, we can still shine on our own. That way, we’ll never find ourselves lost again. That way we don’t end up collecting those pieces of ourselves laying scattered and disintegrated, like the ones they’ve seen when they came along.