To My Abuser
Yeah, it’s about to get real.
I never got to confront you about all the shit you put me though. I never will, so this letter that you’ll never read will have to suffice.
I have to say, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive you for all the hell you put me through.
For how lonely, how worthless, you made me feel.
I used to think it was my fault. I should have seen the warning signs early on, should have run away a lot sooner.
But no, fuck that. It’s not my fault.
It’s your fault. For seeing how you were hurting me, and hurting me anyway. For seeing how much I trusted you, and breaking that trust. For knowing how fragile I already was when I met you, and just breaking me further despite your claims of love and promises that you cared about me.
I just don’t understand. Why? Why do the things you did to me, and then claim that you love me? This sick, perverse, version of love that you picture in your warped head is not love, not in the slightest. It’s toxic. It’s demeaning. It’s a power hungry monster that wrapped its ugly claws around my throat and pulled me down under the water.
I was drowning for years.
You managed to take me, a person who was happy, who had a shining outlook on life, and turn me into a shell of that person. A person who can’t look in the mirror without wanting to smash it in hopes that the version of me that I see will shatter with it. Who has built a wall around her heart that not even the best rock climbers in the world could climb.
Are you happy now? Are you proud? Are you sitting there, alone in your house, patting yourself on the back for destroying me?
My anger boils over every time I think of you. And I try not to, but your memory is engraved in my mind and no matter how hard I try, I can’t remove the scars you left behind. Even though I’m free, I’m a prisoner to my memories.
To every time you made me cry
To every time I couldn’t sleep at night
To every time I had to cover up a bruise
To every time I thought “if I die, would I make the news?”