on disappointment

i don’t think people talk enough about how heavy disappointment is. it sounds like such a small word, like a sigh you can brush off. but the truth is, disappointment lingers. it sits inside you. sometimes i think it stays longer than heartbreak, because at least heartbreak is sharp and obvious, you know what you’ve lost. disappointment is quieter, and maybe that’s why it seeps deeper.

i’ve been disappointed more times than i want to count. by people, by myself, by life in general. and it never comes how you expect. it’s not always a dramatic betrayal, sometimes it’s just the slow realization that what you hoped for won’t happen. that someone you believed in isn’t who you thought. that the version of yourself you imagined doesn’t exist.

and the cruel thing about disappointment is how ordinary it is. you don’t get to rage at it, not really. you just sit there with it. like waiting for a door to open that never does, until you eventually stop knocking.

i think the hardest part is how it changes you. every new disappointment teaches you to lower the bar a little more. you expect less. you prepare yourself for the letdown before it even arrives. you tell yourself it’s better this way, that you’re protecting yourself. but secretly, it feels like you’re dimming. like you’re shrinking your hope until it can’t be hurt anymore.

i don’t want to live like that, but i catch myself doing it. when something good starts to happen, instead of feeling joy, i feel suspicion. how long until this collapses? what’s the catch? when someone says they’ll be there for me, i hear the unspoken until they’re not. it’s exhausting, building a life on the expectation of being let down. but it’s also honest, isn’t it? because people do leave. things do fall apart. life does break its promises.

sometimes i wonder if disappointment is just proof that i cared too much. if the only way to avoid it is to stop expecting anything at all. but that feels like another kind of death. i don’t want to walk through life numb, refusing to believe in anything just so i won’t be hurt.

so i’m caught in between. i carry my disappointments like small stones in my pockets. they don’t weigh me down completely, but they’re there. reminders. i tell myself not to expect too much, but i can’t help it. part of me still wants to believe, still wants to lean toward hope even when i know how it usually ends.

maybe that’s the cycle of being human. hope, disappointment, repeat. maybe the point isn’t to avoid disappointment but to keep choosing anyway. to accept that things and people will let me down, and still decide to care, still decide to try.

but i can’t lie: some days it’s harder than others. some days the weight of all the little stones feels unbearable. some days i wonder if there’s anything left in me that still expects anything good at all.

and yet here i am, writing this. which probably means i do.