A Black Girl Wrote This

If they can’t afford your worth, stop offering discounts to people who mistake access for entitlement.

I came across a quote the other day that grabbed me by the throat.

It said:

Let’s talk about it.

Because a lot of us are out here calling it patience, grace, or unconditional love—when really? It’s self-abandonment in disguise.

It’s martyrdom.
It’s grief.
It’s fear in a lace front.

You’re waiting for them to treat you right. To see your value. To finally show up the way you’ve been hoping they would. Waiting for someone to finally see your worth while everything in your spirit is screaming, You already know the answer.

You keep hoping the bare minimum is just a phase. You keep explaining, justifying, and rationalizing your needs. You keep believing that if you just hold on a little longer, love will show up differently.

And every time they fall short, you lower the bar just a little more. You call it understanding. You call it loyalty. But really? You’re shrinking yourself to fit inside someone else’s limited capacity.

🔥 The Tea: Love that asks you to shrink is not love.
It’s manipulation wearing your favorite perfume.

It’s bullshit, cosplaying as potential.

And you keep trying to be “the one who stayed.” “The one who was patient”. “The one who didn’t give up”.

But shug, what if choosing you was the real loyalty test?
What if staying is the betrayal?

You don’t need to set yourself on fire to prove that you’re warm. You don’t need to starve yourself emotionally just to keep someone else fed.

Your worth is not up for negotiation.

If someone can’t meet you where you are—emotionally, spiritually, energetically—that is not a reflection of your value. That is a reflection of their bandwidth. Their lack. Their limitation.

And you deserve to stop confusing someone’s emotional immaturity with a personal rejection.

You can be everything they prayed for and still not be what they’re ready for.
You can be love in full and still be met with half-effort.

And that’s not a reason to wait. That’s a reason to walk.

Stop Holding Your Breath for Potential.

You are not a rehab center for people who might love you better one day. You are not a lesson someone needs to lose in order to grow.

🔥 The Tea: Every time you stay in a situation that requires you to compromise your standards, you teach yourself that your worth is negotiable.

It’s not honey bun.
Stop. It.

Here’s what we’re doing instead—

LEVEL 1: Awareness — Recognizing Where You Compromise

Start tracking the patterns:

• Are you over-giving and under-receiving?

• Do you feel like you have to perform to keep the peace?

• Are you constantly explaining your feelings to someone who never hears you?

This isn’t love. This is labor.

Awareness is the first glow-up. Call a spade a spade.

LEVEL 2: Accountability — Holding the Mirror Up

• Why am I accepting less than I give?

• What am I afraid will happen if I leave?

• Am I choosing comfort over growth?

You don’t need to shame yourself. But you do need to check yourself. Sometimes the pattern isn’t just about them—it’s about what you keep co-signing.

🔥 The Tea: You can’t heal in a place that keeps reopening your wounds. You don’t fix abandonment issues by staying where you feel unseen.

LEVEL 3: Action — Reclaiming Your Standards in Real Time

So what do you do instead?

✅ You pause. Breathe. Pull your energy back.
✅ You stop explaining and start enforcing.
✅ You communicate your boundary once. And mean it.
✅ You give your love where it is safe, not just familiar.

You stop waiting to be chosen and choose yourself like your life depends on it. Because fren, it does.

Ask Yourself:

• Am I waiting for them to become someone they’ve never shown me they can be?

• Am I accepting less than I give?

• Am I calling it love when it’s actually just familiarity and fear?

• Am I holding onto hope or just avoiding grief?

• Am I loving their potential while ignoring their patterns?

• If I were operating from wholeness, what would I do differently right now?

You Don’t Need to Be Affordable.

The right people won’t need a discount to love you. They won’t ask you to shrink. They won’t treat your needs like inconveniences.

You Were Never Too Much. They Were Just Unequipped.

Let them go. Let the narrative go. Let the fantasy go.

The right ones won’t need you to dilute your magic. They’ll recognize it. Rise to meet it. And protect it.

🔥 The Tea: Stop waiting to be chosen by someone who already showed you they can’t carry your capacity. You’re not too much. You’re just too expensive for discount love.

You don’t need to be more understanding, more forgiving, more low-maintenance, more “chill.”

You need to be you. Fully. Loudly. Unapologetically.

And the moment you stop waiting to be chosen by someone who keeps proving they aren’t ready? You choose yourself.

And that is the most respectful thing you can do.

When you stop shrinking, you remember:
You are the gift. You are the glow-up. You are the prize.

And from this moment forward? You move like it.

🌱 Affirmation:
I am not here to be tolerated. I am here to be honored. I release anything that requires me to shrink.