Love as a Detour I Meant to Avoid — and the Regret of Getting Off Too Soon

A fourth entry in a healing and love series — where healing no longer avoids the ache of love, but begins to hold it gently.

There are certain promises you make to yourself when you grow up with too little and too much all at once.

Too little money, too many responsibilities. Too little safety, too many expectations. Too little time to be a child, too many reasons to grow up fast.

I am the eldest daughter in a poor family. And even as a young girl, I knew — I wasn’t just living for myself. I was expected to become the one who would change the course of our story. To break the cycle. To build the life we never had.

I watched carefully — how people got stuck. How some gave up. How love, especially the kind that came too soon, often became the beginning of another hardship. Girls who married early, dropped out, lost their dreams, and repeated what we were all trying to escape. So I made a vow: “Not me."

I carried the weight of responsibility early — not by choice, but because life handed it to me. And in my own quiet way, I became strategic. Not just about school or survival, but about love.

If I were ever to let myself feel it, it would have to be brief. It would have to make sense. It could never get in the way.

But then, I fell in love.

Not recklessly. Not impulsively. Deliberately.

I tried to make room for it without letting it reroute my plans. I gave what I could, on my own terms, telling myself it was okay to feel it now — fully — as long as I knew when to leave. I convinced myself it was smart: experience love once so you won’t be distracted by it later. So you won’t wonder.

I didn’t walk in blindly. I walked in with a plan, an exit, and a heart still half-armored. But love doesn’t work like that.

Even after I walked away — because I did — something stayed behind. The softness. The flicker of wonder I hadn’t allowed myself before. And a strange, quiet grief that I didn’t expect to carry.

Sometimes I wonder if that was my only chance. If I already used up the part of me that could be loved that way. If walking away was the strong choice — or the one I made because I didn’t believe I could have both love and a future.

Now, a quiet grief lingers. Not just for the person I left, but for the version of me that once believed love was a detour I could plan.

And here’s the part I’ve never really said aloud: Sometimes I feel like I ruined myself in the process. Not in one big dramatic moment — but slowly. By hardening parts of me that were once tender. By giving myself just enough to love, then cutting it off before it could grow. By becoming someone who no longer knows how to stay, even if someone ever chose me again.

But I want to be clear about something: I never regretted becoming the eldest who showed up. That role — carrying my family, stepping up when I was still so young — it remains the most beautiful part of who I am. I embraced it fully. I still do.

What I regret is giving so much of myself to a young love — believing that if I just loved deeply once, I wouldn’t ache for it later. That I’d be immune to loneliness in the years to come.

But I wasn’t.

And maybe that belief came from a deeper place — from feeling that I didn’t have the capacity to be both the strong one and the soft one at the same time.

That’s where the low self-esteem comes in, I think. Not from failure. But from being forced to be strong too early. And strength, when it’s left unrecognized, can twist into doubt. Into shame. Into this quiet belief that I may never be chosen again — because I once chose duty over desire.

I’m beginning to unlearn some of that now. But I’ll admit it — I feel lost. Stuck. Unsure if what I’m holding is still regret… or just loneliness wearing its face. Sometimes I don’t know if I’m asking for love… or if I’m just tired of being the one who always has to carry on alone.

I question myself a lot. Do I still want love? Or is this just the ache of being left out while the world keeps celebrating connection? Maybe I’ve convinced myself I’m too late — and part of me is just trying to make peace with the emptiness.

Right now, I’m not holding hope. But I’m still here.

And maybe that counts for something.

I carry on — not because I’m sure of anything, but because turning back feels heavier than moving forward. Because somehow, even in this ache, there is still something left beneath it. A kind of quiet persistence. A heartbeat under the mess.

It’s not the triumphant resilience people write poems about. It’s not strength that feels powerful.

It’s just… breathing, existing, trying — after so many almosts, so many not-quites, so many times I thought I lost something forever.

Maybe this is what life becomes after the missing and the mess — Not a perfect redemption, but a softer way of living with the cracks. A way of staying, even when you feel like you’ve already been left behind.

Missed the earlier pieces in this healing and love series?

Please visit - Beneath the Misses, Beyond the Mess: My Way Back to Me

And then the rest of the mess unfolds…

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