You have been taking out high-interest emotional loans just to sit in the same room as people who were never going to give you a return on that investment. And the reason you keep choosing them is not because you are broken. It is because they are the only ones who will accept your currency. A person who truly knows their own worth cannot be bought. They will not let you bankroll your way into their heart.

I grew up in a single-parent household, watching my mother carry more weight than one person should. She worked tirelessly to provide for me and my baby brother, and because of that, I had to grow up fast. I never had that steady presence of a father to tell me I was enough, to affirm me, to model what love from a man should look like. Because of that, I went searching for it. I gave my love away too easily, thinking if I could just be enough for someone, they wouldn’t leave