Hope keeps you standing. Then it starts holding you back.

I waited a long time for someone to become what I hoped they would be.

We have all been there.

I believed it. I saw the good moments, I told myself patience was enough. I was waiting for a person who, I understood later, didn't exist. The one who existed was the one I imagined.

For a while it works like that. Hope keeps you standing. It gives you a reason to stay.

The problem comes later.

It comes when you realise you're building everything on a person who isn't there. There's the one you imagine. The one who could be. But the real one, in front of you, is someone else.

And you keep waiting anyway.

Because waiting costs less than admitting something uncomfortable. That maybe they won't change. That maybe the problem isn't time. That maybe it's on you to move.

Hope is strange. For a stretch it protects you. Then it starts holding you back without you noticing.

Then you understand. You find the courage. You try. You step back. Then comes the day we stop waiting. I don't think it's resignation. It's more the day we take back a decision we had handed to someone else.

Hoping the other person changes is easy. Deciding what you'll do, that's the hard part.

It isn't simple. I know. But it's on you to decide whether to stop waiting or start choosing.