"People don't forget girls like you. They try. But they won't ever forget what your love felt like." -Anonymous

As I was sitting in a tiny cafe, looking through Pinterest I read this quote, and for some reason it played over and over again in my head all day. I've always struggled to understand why relationships end and why they do in the manner they do. I don't understand how two people who shared so much love, and compassion, and happiness together can turn those feelings into hatred, anger and disgust. I struggle with letting people go, even when they've hurt me because I strongly believe in second (and sometimes third or fourth) chances. I sometimes to a fault believe that people are too good, that they don't purposefully set out to hurt you. As I've learned and usually the hard way, not everyone has the same kind of heart I do. They don't love me the way I've set out to love them, it's not their fault we've all had a different experience in the world, but they don't know sometimes what love feels like and thats honestly OK.

Because of that quote and my own experiences I've started to pride myself on that fact that people don't love the same way I do but will always remember how I loved them. I haven't been in love much only a few times but they changed my life. They were experiences that I will cherish and lessons I will continue to learn from. Having and losing something I never though would end is actually something I would never change about my life, but I also realized that goes with any kind of love. We love people for many reasons, for being our friends, for being partners in life, and even for being family.

Every time I find myself struggling with something around the topic of love and losing someone I would always go to my grandmother for advice and she would always ask me this question: "When did loving other people eclipse loving yourself?" She would wait for an answer that I could never come up with. I was always thinking of others before myself and then one day it hit me that it's OK to choose me over others. I had seen it happen many times; old friends that I thought would be around forever stopped choosing me and started choosing themselves more. It took me a very long time to figure out that was normal, and accept that it was going to happen whether I was "ready" for it to or not. But because of that I realized it was time to choose me because those people were going to realize they were missing something eventually and that it would be my love. It's OK to be the girl they'll never forget.