Member-only story
What It Means To Love Someone Who Will Never Love You Back

Hollow.
The first word that comes to mind when you love someone who will never love you back. Empty. Void. Blank. Pointless.
Hollow.
Because that’s exactly what it is.
It’s like eating junk food when you’re not even hungry because you’re sure, so surethat it will satiate you. That it will make you happy. That it will give you some sort of sense of satisfaction, of contentment. But that feeling never comes and you’re left just sitting in front of what is essentially, a waste, with nothing to show for it but a mess you’ve done to yourself.
It’s an uphill battle where there’s nothing waiting for you at the top. A marathon with no one else at the finish line. It’s fighting every day with bloody knuckles and an even more battered heart hoping that someone will be there to make everything worth it, everything okay, and realizing that you’re standing alone with absolutely nothing to show for yourself and your struggles, responsible for picking up the pieces of your own emotions solo.
Because metaphors aside, there’s not really anything good or at the very least, fulfilling, that comes from falling in love with someone who you know deep down will never truly love you back.
It’s purposeless. It’s empty.
It leaves you completely hollow.
Loving someone, really truly loving someone, who cannot and will not love you back isn’t something that will make you stronger. It can teach you a lot of things, but make you stronger? Not really. No matter which way you paint it, whatever beautiful embellishment you try to put onto your own cliché unrequited love, there’s not really a life lesson to take away from the situation.
Because the number one thing you learn when you love someone who doesn’t love you back?
It’s that sometimes, love really isn’t enough.
Loving someone, and continuing to love someone who will not love you back isn’t brave. And it isn’t strong. While there is something to be said for having a big heart and having the capacity to give pieces of yourself to people who don’t, and don’t deserve to, appreciate you, holding onto them when they aren’t holding…