For the past year and some change of icy words and resentment, we had been playing a game of stubborn see-saw. Except I carried the remains of a disastrous relationship on my shoulders. I dealt with the consequences and the pain - you didn’t, and as I was on the bottom, I’d see you up there high and mighty in your arrogance. I wanted a turn up there but you continued to figure out ways to weigh me down; you had the upper hand of simply not giving a fuck about what was wrong and what was right. No moral compass.
Refer to any of my work and you will see the catastrophic pain you caused. I harvested the misery from my own heart and strung it together to create hymns and songs only the heart broken would understand… They were the only things that got me through the hell you brought about for a very long time.
Eventually, I would overcome you.
Not for you, but for myself. I had to forgive you so I could sleep at night again. I had to forgive you so that I could release my mind from the turmoil and angst. I had to forgive you so that I could forgive myself…
You see, I held on to the pain, dare I say our pain. I couldn’t sleep at night when I would replay our life, stopping at moments I stopped at before, just to ask myself “is there where it went wrong?”. I couldn’t think during the day for longer than five minutes until I would be reminded of you. Something you said, something that broke me, words that tore me apart, the coldness I couldn’t decipher. That killed me, not ever being able to confront you about the devastation I was in because of you. But I forgave you, because I had to forgive myself - for continuing to be pathetic and letting you engulf my time, energy, and mind.
I’d moved on and occasionally I would think of you. Think of how you hurt me, but never too long. It was like standing in a gallery and gazing at a piece of art: so wild, beautiful, tortured. You admire, connect, and then move on to the next. I wasn’t mesmerized and intoxicated by it any longer. You were just the past. I had accepted and came to my own peace about it all.
So imagine my surprise when you write to me out of the blue, and apologize. I half chuckle as I even write this, still amazed by what you did. You see, I planned the rest of my life understanding you were incapable of saying sorry or treating me as anything other than quite frankly, shit. I gave up all hopes of that ever happening. Self reflection was something you were clearly not programmed with, in my mind.
Somewhere in admitting you were the one to destroy us, somewhere in between saying sorry, somewhere there, you asked for a second chance.
Somewhere in all of those words, you did a great number of things. In your lines you had confirmed to me that my pain was real. All the times you chose to ignore my claims, how you wouldn’t pay it mind - gone. I was justified. My journey, my pain, it was justified. You exonerated me from the sentence of us. I felt the weight of us roll off my shoulders like water flowing down river.
And the second chance? You made me feel like a woman in your eyes again - now, not that I needed to be, but because after the quick, rushed, bitter ending of us, I was stuck. I was trapped with insecurities and feeling that I wasn’t good enough. But you wanted me again, and so that had meant I was something you lost…
I didn’t know that your apology could melt away so much hatred and resentment, but it did. It didn’t matter how long overdue, whether it was in person or writing. I was free from the pain. In all those words, you set me loose. I hadn’t known I was waiting. It was the rare and last good thing you did for me. Thank you.
Never have I thought you would be the one.
