"Maybe if I was good enough for him, he'd love me back."

Maybe if he was good enough for you, he'd be able to see what he has in front of him.

People are hard to conquer. But even before they can be conquered, they must be understood. And a lot of people won't let you have the time of day to understand them -- it doesn't matter if you're sweet like syrup, or caring like their kind-hearted mothers. That's where things start to get sticky. Because you try and you try, and they refuse to receive or reciprocate. Then you blame yourself and start on a spiral of self-hatred and terrible habits.

So here's where you are now: stuck. Overexposed with nothing to show for it but a few never-healing wounds. You get in your head and start thinking you did everything wrong and that no one in the world will ever let you conquer them. Not even in a "power-over-them" way, just in a way of understanding and being intimate with them. You try so hard with every person you meet to be nothing but compassionate, but they eat your compassionate with their dirt-ridden fingers not leaving an inch of it untouched. And they leave. So it's on you to pick yourself up again.

There are days where you will give up. You'll rinse your compassion and leave it in the laptop sleeve of your backpack, and only feel it when you open up your backpack. You'll keep your head down and make snide remarks to your roommate when they try cheering you up. And that's how you know you gave every good part of yourself over to monsters with beautiful eyes.

Don't stop. Don't, for one second, stop giving your all to others. Even monsters will remember the goodness they had in their life, even for a second. Rebuild the good parts of you, refuse to blame yourself, remain soft. The world is already riddled with miserable, selfish people. They will take advantage of you, but don't give up. One day, you'll meet someone with the same compassion and burning embers in their eyes, and you will conquer each other. At the end of the day you'll have someone who carries their heart on their sleeve as well as yours. And most of us will be wondering where we went wrong.