Journal January Entry 5: Unconditional

Journal January — Day 5

Prompt: What’s something you used to want badly… that you no longer care about at all?

For a long time, I believed that wanting something badly enough was proof it mattered. That longing itself was a kind of compass, pointing toward what I should keep reaching for, even when the reaching was exhausting.

What I wanted most back then felt simple, almost foundational: unconditional parental love. Not admiration. Not approval. Just the sense of being met without conditions attached.

I didn’t question the wanting for a long time. I just adjusted myself around it. I learned how to soften my edges, how to be careful with my words, how to anticipate reactions before they happened. I told myself this was maturity. Emotional intelligence. The cost of staying connected.

What I didn’t see at first was how much of myself I was slowly placing on the table in exchange for proximity, closeness to the two people who society told me loved me more than anything or anyone

I tried being quieter. I tried being impressive. I tried being agreeable. I tried being patient. I tried explaining myself from every possible angle, convinced that clarity would eventually turn into understanding.

It didn’t.

Years later, I made the decision to stop speaking to my parents. Not suddenly. Not in anger. But after enough evidence to understand that continuing the relationship required a version of myself I could no longer maintain. It was a choice made in self-respect, not resentment.

With that distance came something I didn’t expect: the wanting dissolved.

Not because the desire was wrong, but because I finally understood what it demanded in return.

Unconditional love that asks you to abandon yourself is not love at all. It’s a contract where the terms keep changing, and the cost is always your own well-being.

I stopped caring about being understood by people who consistently misunderstood me. I stopped craving validation from a place that withheld it. I stopped hoping that if I became smaller, quieter, or more accomplished, something essential would shift.

What shifted instead was my relationship to myself.

I learned that some longings are sustained by hope rather than reality. That release can come not from getting what you want, but from recognizing when wanting no longer serves you.

I no longer care about unconditional parental love because I have built something steadier in its place. A life with boundaries. Relationships that don’t require self-erasure. A sense of peace that isn’t contingent on anyone else’s approval.

There is grief in that acceptance, but there is also clarity. And clarity, I’ve learned, is its own kind of freedom.