The quiet ache of not feeling chosen

It’s not that you’ve started loving me the way I need you to. I’ve just learned to feel unloved. I’ve become accustomed to the way you don’t care and the way you roll your eyes when I pour my heart out to you. I’ve grown to carrying the load on my back, that now when I don’t have something weighing me down, I start to feel empty. 

I call it love when you ignore me, thinking I might be asking for too much. But is wanting to feel loved too much to ask? Is wanting to be pampered and cared for too much of a hassle? Maybe it is. So I’ve stopped asking, and now I feel loved. 

I’m confused. What does love look like? Is it what our mothers endured? Silence and suffering? Is it submission wrapped around longing? Is it tear-stained faces with a stitched smile? 

I can’t even say that love does not exist because if I can rip open my chest and pour the world out for you, then why can’t you do the same, or maybe half of that? Even an ounce of that would be enough for me. 

But you’re selfish, or maybe just too naive to understand that love does not grow on trees like fruit. It is the tree itself. Love is the land trees grow on. 

But each time when the feeling of feeling unloved bites me, I try to come to terms with it. Because I tell myself that the bare minimum is enough, even if it comes from selfish reasons. But then what is the bare minimum? 

You not loving me doesn’t bother me. It’s the fact that I keep loving you even when you turn your head and walk away. I keep running back to you, even though I’m having a panic attack, and all you’re doing is kicking a soccer ball instead of holding me because I am breaking and hurting. 

See, I don’t love with half my heart. I love with my soul. You can live without a heart, but tell me, how do you live without a soul?