Dear Someone: When you grieve the love that wasn't enough, remember you're really mourning the self you left behind.

Read this if you're struggling to understand why the pain feels deeper when you compromised your standards and it still ended in heartbreak.

Dear, Dear Someone, _

There's a peculiar kind of heartbreak that comes not just from losing someone, but from losing yourself in the process of loving them. I remember the day my world shattered like it was yesterday. The evidence of their betrayal lay before me like shards of broken glass—each text message, each hidden rendezvous, each carefully crafted lie cutting deeper than the last. The person I had given my everything to had been living a double life, and I was the fool who never saw it coming. Or perhaps, more accurately, I was the fool who saw the signs but chose to paint them in colors of trust and hope.