“You deserve better than me.”
I’m a girl only a few months away from turning 20, and I feel like my whole life revolves around this one sentence:
“You deserve better than me.”
I’m the oldest daughter and the oldest granddaughter in my family. Growing up, I was always the “perfect” student — straight A’s, always getting 100%, always trying my best and trying to do everything flawlessly. Even now, in both work and school, I tend to be very perfectionistic and avoid mistakes as much as possible.
But this never turned me into an arrogant or selfish person. I’m actually very emotional and expressive with my feelings. If anything, I’ve always tried to be understanding, accepting of different opinions, and open-minded toward people in social life. I know it sounds strange to describe yourself this way, but I’m trying to explain the kind of person I am socially.
What hurts me is that ever since childhood, I’ve struggled to form normal human connections — not because of me, but because of how other people seem to perceive me.
In multiple friendships throughout my life, people have said things like:
“You’re too good for me.”
“You probably never do anything wrong.”
Or they treat me like I’m some kind of unattainable “perfect” person.
Some people even seem to doubt the depth of my emotions or my humanity just because they see me as “too perfect.”
It honestly feels like people decide for me that I’m somehow above them, or that I wouldn’t truly accept them in my life, even though I have never acted that way or said anything to imply it.
I’ve cried over this for years.
The best way I can describe it is this:
I feel like an expensive painting in a museum. People admire it from afar, but nobody dares to get close enough to touch it.
This pattern even followed me into my emotional life. I once had a crush on someone for nearly two years. We talked consistently, though we never became anything more than friends because I never confessed my feelings.
A while ago, he blocked me everywhere and started dating another girl. Later, I heard that he told his friend:
“She deserves someone better than me.”
And what hurts the most is that he did all of this without any consideration for my feelings at all — maybe because he genuinely believed it was impossible for me to love him that deeply in the first place.
He never respected the possibility that my feelings were real.
What am I supposed to do with all these feelings for him?
“You deserve more than me.”
I know some people think that sentence sounds sweet, but to me it was devastating, because it echoed the same thing I’ve heard my entire life:
People deciding on my behalf that they are not “good enough” for me, then leaving.
And what hurts the most is the loneliness.
I don’t really have close friendships. I don’t feel emotionally connected to anyone in a deep, human way.
I cry every night because of it 💔
Has anyone else experienced this?
How do you stop feeling emotionally distant from everyone when that’s the last thing you actually want?