Secondhand Love

It was my friend's big breakup with her longterm boyfriend that punched me right in the gut. Knocked me off balance about how I perceive the love I think I deserve. You see, as much as it fears me to have it, I have never thought of myself highly enough to be loved so much by someone that is magnificent and glorious or even to be held so dearly and so faithfully by someone that could love me for who I am. It is a strange concept to accept it--to acknowledge it, but it is embedded in my mind all the same, how I could never feel the caresses of a lover. That this person that I'd end up with would probably still mourn over his past love; his past perfect love.

But it never occurred to me that there was another type of secondhand love. A type that burns you just the same like the aforementioned relationship. Where one of the pairs expect the other to expect them to be similar to their expectations. It can be quite hard to live in that retrospect. How our own expectations of how others treat us is actually what kills us the most--not their actual expectations of us. Our own imaginative head manages to make us suffer more exponentially than before. Funny how our own thoughts could be the source of our state of decay, but also could be the cure.

Have you ever felt that way?