By Bianca Ysabel Muñoz | February 14, 2024
Why do we try to salvage bonds with people who are completely okay with life without us? We often find ourselves making plans and efforts to convey that we deserve the same affection we give, but instead, we receive excuses. And for this, there’s only one thing I can say: Don’t burn for people who will not stand under the sun with you.
We all have those bonds where we are constantly anxious about whether they value our relationship with them the same way we do. Most of the time, we test these kinds of relationships by not making plans, trying to make them miss us—but we somehow end up calling them first after months and even trying to convince them to grab lunch.
Most of the time, we think that maybe helping them wasn’t enough for them to message us a “how are you?” text. Maybe, we weren’t good enough listeners when they needed to be heard—when in reality, we still remember, word-for-word, the things they cried about.
As the one-call-away in relationships, it can be exhausting if we don’t even have people in our contacts ready to be called when we need to. As humans, we also get emotionally drained and lost when the world is spinning too fast for our little legs to keep up with. We may or may not need a hug or a warm comforting talk with the people we cherish, but we still deserve the same kind of effort and value we give people.
I only hope we all will get to that stage at some point in our lives.
We are more than just backburners. We are more than just bridges to relationships. And we are more than the steps they took to trample upon our efforts to become a people who treat connections the way we want to be treated.
We have tried to save that relationship. This time, let us save ourselves. We need to respect ourselves by accepting that maybe things are just the way they are because they’re supposed to be that way. Let us stop giving people warmth if they reciprocate it by sending shivers. After all, receiving low-maintenance treatment from the people you value will not do you good. I hope that we can learn to stop giving people our best without receiving the same effort.
Bianca Ysabel T. Muñoz is a seventeen-year-old 11th-grade HUMSS student and an alumna of RTPM- Dumaguete Science High School.
