Unlearning things to learn

                     

There’s a quiet ache that comes with expecting too much from people. Sometimes it’s friends, family, and sometimes someone you just met who seemed to hold a promise. I find myself creating these quiet blueprints in my head of who they could be; how they’ll act, what they’ll say, and their role in my life. And then reality, in its blunt honesty, shows me otherwise. It does sting at times. Not because they failed me, but because I created a version of them that never existed.

                         Then I realized that disappointment isn’t born out of who people are. It’s born out of who I wanted them to be. The frustration isn’t with their actions but the gap between my imagined version of them and the actual human standing before me. That’s a hard pill to swallow, because it means part of the pain is self-inflicted. I’m not just disappointed in them, but myself for expecting too much, romanticising, and refusing to accept people as they are.

                        This doesn’t mean people don’t make mistakes. They do. They can be careless, selfish, or unkind. But even then, my anger often circles back to the same root: “I thought you were different.” That’s where the heartbreak lies. Not in their actions alone, but in my belief that they wouldn’t do that, couldn’t do that. The mismatch between the person I built in my mind and the person they’ve always been is uncanny.

What complicates things further is that expectations sneak in quietly. Even when I tell myself, “Don’t expect anything; just let people be,” I still find myself hoping for loyalty, kindness, and understanding. And hope is a dangerous twin of expectation. When that hope isn’t met, it doesn’t just feel like disappointment but betrayal, even when no promise was ever made. That’s the trap. It feels harsh to admit, but maybe this disappointment is a teacher. It’s teaching me that expectations, however innocent, are heavy. And sometimes the only way to stop breaking my heart is to stop asking people to be anything other than themselves.

Lately, I’ve been trying to unlearn this cycle. To look at people not through the lens of what I want them to be, but for who they consistently show themselves to be. It’s not easy. The heart is stubborn. It loves to imagine the “potential” version of someone. But maybe real peace comes from refusing to rewrite people in our heads and reading them precisely as they are; raw, flawed, complicated.