It’s hard to harbor hatred toward the person you love most. You can feel “content” with your life, yet carry so many painful emotions that surface like rogue waves: unpredictable, powerful, and capable of capsizing your entire world. That’s how I feel right now, and how I’ve felt for almost the last couple of decades. How did I end up here? After thinking it through, I realized it was a mix of "putting them on a pedestal", and a lack of self‑worth and self‑respect.
To give some context: I fell in love with someone two and a half years older than me when I was four. To the extent a four year old can love, I just knew from the moment I saw them that they made me happy, and I wanted to be with them for as long as I could. The years passed and my family moved to another state, so I couldn’t see them often, but I never stopped dreaming of a life together. When I was twelve, I confessed my feelings; they said they saw me like a sibling and gently rejected me. I was hurt, a lot, but in time I accepted it.
Two years later, they returned and knocked on my bedroom door one morning. Nothing serious happened that time, yet all my old feelings came rushing back. We drifted apart again but kept in touch, and I was told they wanted to be with me, too. I can’t describe the happiness I felt. Then, a few months later, I learned they were expecting a baby, obviously not mine.
I dropped everything. I was depressed for weeks, then decided I would be "all logic, no feelings". Once the baby arrived, their family visited mine. I discovered the other parent had abandoned them entirely. Then they began flirting with me, trying to win me back. I realize now how little self‑love and respect I had, because I gradually let them in again, perhaps also as a hormonal teenager. That’s how my current relationship began: I became the step‑parent to the child of the person I’d loved since I was four.