​What Love Should Never Cost

Is it self-destruction
to love someone
more than they could ever care for you?

Or is it simply foolishness?

Some would say
they would rather live a thousand lives as a fool
than become something bitter,
something hateful.

But there comes a point
where the real damage
isn’t caused by love itself.

It’s caused by knowingly remaining
in something
that slowly takes pieces of you away.

Not because the other person asked for it,
but because you continued to offer yourself
to a situation
that could never return
what you were giving.

And after enough time,
the loss is no longer about them.

It becomes about you.

Your self-worth.
Your identity.
The way you begin to see yourself
through rejection,
through silence,
through the constant feeling
of never being enough.

That’s where it turns dangerous.

Because the death that follows
isn’t physical.

It’s the slow erosion
of the person you were
before you started measuring your value
through someone else’s inability
to love you back.