Upside Down
Sometimes the hardest person to love is the one who doesn’t know how to show love back.
I gave someone my patience, my time, my loyalty, and pieces of my heart they probably never even realized I was giving. I loved them in ways they didn’t know how to understand. Not because they’re a bad person.. but because they’re someone who doesn’t know how to express what they feel, someone who carries so much pain inside that they don’t even know how to let love in when it’s right in front of them.
And somewhere in the middle of loving them so deeply, I slowly started losing feelings.
And somewhere in the middle of loving them so deeply, I slowly started losing myself.
At first you don’t notice it happening. You just keep giving a little more of yourself, thinking maybe this time they’ll see it. Maybe this time they’ll understand how much you care. Maybe this time something will finally change. But days turn into weeks, and weeks turn into months, and you start realizing that you’re pouring all your love into someone who doesn’t know how to hold it.
Loving someone who doesn’t know how to love themselves is one of the most painful things a person can go through. I watched someone I cared about hate his life. I listened when he said everything kept getting worse and worse. I watched him numb himself with drugs, talk about wanting to die, and act like nothing in his life would ever get better.
And every time he said those things, it hurt to hear them. Not because I didn’t understand the pain he was feeling. but because I cared enough to wish I could take that pain away from him.
All I ever wanted was to pull him out of that darkness. I wanted him to see the good in himself that I could see so clearly. I wanted him to understand that his life mattered, that he mattered, that he deserved something better than the way he was living.
But loving someone like that slowly breaks you too.
Because when you love someone who’s drowning in their own pain, you start drowning with them. Their darkness starts becoming your darkness. Their sadness starts following you everywhere you go.
And after a while, you realize you’re carrying pain that was never yours to begin with.
The night my car flipped over, I realized how lost I really was.
Everything happened so fast. One moment I was driving, and the next moment the world was upside down. Metal twisting. Glass breaking. The sound of everything crashing around me. And then silence.
When I woke up, the car was flipped over and I was trapped inside. The door wouldn’t open. Smoke was slowly filling the car. My body hurt, my head was spinning, and everything around me felt unreal.
And in that moment, laying there alone in the silence, time felt like it stopped.
I remember staring at the roof of the car… except it wasn’t the roof anymore. The world was upside down and so was my life.
And a thought crossed my mind that scared me more than the crash itself.
Maybe if I died that night, I could finally stop loving someone who was hurting me so much.
That thought sat in my head while I laid there, trapped, hurt, and completely alone. And it made me realize just how much I had been carrying inside my heart.
Because the truth is. I loved him more than I probably should have.
I forgave things I probably shouldn’t have forgiven. I ignored things that probably should’ve been the moment I walked away. Even when he did things that hurt me, I still cared. I still stayed.
I tried to guide him. I tried to redirect him. I tried to tell him he deserved better for himself. I wanted him to be okay, even when I wasn’t.
But it always felt like the things I said never really mattered to him.
Like my words were just passing through the air instead of reaching his heart.
And somehow, even after everything… even after destroying my car that night.. even after feeling that broken. I still cared about him.
I still like him more than I probably should.
That’s the painful part about loving someone deeply. Your heart doesn’t just stop caring because it’s been hurt.
You can know someone isn’t good for you. You can know they’ve hurt you. You can know they never gave you the same love you gave them.
And somehow your heart still remembers the way you cared about them.
I just hope that one day he understands how real my love was.
Because it wasn’t fake. It wasn’t temporary. And it wasn’t something I just said.
It was the kind of love that stayed when things were ugly. The kind of love that didn’t walk away when things got dark. The kind of love that tried to understand someone’s pain instead of judging it.
The kind of love that kept giving.. even when it was slowly breaking me.
And maybe one day, when I’m just a memory in his life, he’ll finally realize something.
That the person who cared about him the most… was the one he never truly saw. ��
Nathan M Flores
3/7/2026