you cannot be everything to everyone

note from your older sister - 01

“You cannot be everything to everyone at every time.”

I had said this to her, my honorary younger sister, fit alongside my own little sisters, probably a bit too bluntly.

She was telling me of friends, and the boy she was talking to, and her troubles and their troubles. It all seemed to tangle into one. Every sentence carried someone else’s weight. She’d pause, trying to find where she fit in between it all.

I had said it abruptly to her, but it wasn’t to her I was speaking. Rather the mirror of another version of myself who knew what it felt like to live like that, to be everyone’s safe place but never your own.

So I say this to that version of myself, and her, and you.

We don’t always see it when we’re in the thick of it; how easily we measure our worth by how much of ourselves we can give away. How swiftly need and love become intertwined before they are irrevocably inseperable.

I say this as the oldest sister who knows what it is like to give and give and give, ripping off pieces of myself just so there was enough to keep giving. Pouring into people, into problems, into every small fire we think only we can put out.

It’s a strange thing, how easily we forget ourselves in the name of care, and how welcomed that is in the world.

I think a lot of us were taught that love and loyalty is proven through endurance. Through how much we can hold, how much we can give, how long we can stay standing after everyone else has gone to rest. Somewhere along the way, kindness and care became currency. Calling it empathy, when it was pure exhaustion disguised behind devotion.

Let me be clear, there is nothing wrong with being kind and selfless — the world could use more of it. But there is importance between giving and giving too much.

It’s like standing at the table with a single jug of water. Everyone’s glass is half-empty, so you pour. A little here, a little there. You make sure they’re all full before you even think to reach for your own. You tell yourself you’ll fill it later, there is enough, as you continue to fill while they drink. When you finally sit to pour into your own, you come to find you have run dry before you even realize you’ve been pouring for too long.

Caring has never been meant to empty you in this way.

It’s almost graceful in how it slips past you. You think you’re just tired, or busy, or being a good friend. But somewhere in the middle of all that giving, something dulls about you. You shrink, little by little, to fit into the corners of other people’s lives, other people’s needs. And the smaller you get, the easier it becomes to mistake emptiness for peace.

When you give everything away, you start to lose the parts of yourself that made you worth coming to in the first place. Your warmth, your light, your ease — all feebly traded for the illusion of being indispensable.

That’s something that hurts to learn the hard way. If you don’t draw the line, they will keep taking. Not because they’re cruel, but because people grow comfortable with what you allow. And if you’ve made yourself endlessly available, they’ll never think to ask if it’s costing you something.

You have to decide who gets to come in, and when. You have to decide how much of yourself to give, and to whom. And it will feel selfish, but it’s not. It is not selfish when in the name of self-preservation. You can love them and still choose yourself.

You can’t keep setting yourself on fire just to keep everyone else warm. You can’t pour from an empty cup and call it love. You can’t stretch yourself so thin that you disappear. When care turns into obligation, you start mistaking their needs for your purpose. Their moods, their heartbreak, their self-perception, it seeps into you.

At some point, you have to stop proving your love through depletion. You have to stop calling exhaustion devotion. You have to say, this is what’s mine to carry and that is what’s yours.

Because you can’t heal someone by hollowing yourself out. You can’t teach them how to love themselves if you forget to love yourself first. You can’t teach them how to stand if you never stop holding them up.

Because if you’re everything to everyone, there’s nothing left for you.

And this I am going to tell you to spare you of some shock: Setting boundaries isn’t always pretty. In fact, it’s often painful and disappointing. Not everyone will understand or care about you in return.

It’s uncomfortable. People might push back. They might sulk. They might even walk away. And that’s okay.

If they can’t understand that you have to care for yourself first, then the relationship wasn’t entirely of mutual care and support— it was parasitism.

It doesn’t make you unkind. It doesn’t make you weak.

My love, you must understand, not everyone cares and freely loves the way you do. Not everyone comes with good intentions. Not everyone has a heart so beautifully golden and genuine the way yours is.

Sometimes you just have to be “such a selfish bitch”.

You’re allowed to stop giving before there’s nothing left to give. You’re allowed to say no without apology. You’re allowed to take the space and time to refill, to breathe, to be whole again.

Some people will leave. And they should. Because the ones who stay, the ones who really care, will respect the line you draw. They’ll understand that your love isn’t less because it has limits.

The ones who truly belong in your life will understand that your care has boundaries. It’s not your job to carry every weight, to answer every call, to solve every problem. You can’t be everything to everyone at every time they need.

Because that? That is not your job.

Because giving yourself away endlessly doesn’t make you better. It makes you empty.

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