Tag: trauma

Sometimes it’s not do or do not – it is try

SamLeave a comment

Dear N,

I’ve sat down and tried to write this letter to you a million times. I want to tell you how much you hurt me, how much I hate you, and how much I wish you had stayed under the rock you hid under for 3 years. But I can’t tell you those things because I don’t hate you. I’ve said it before but hate is easy. Hating you gives you power over me. Too many people have had power over me for too long. I need to reclaim my power. So no, I don’t hate you and I wish I did because that would make my feelings for you make sense and right now nothing makes sense. 

I could post the screenshots of every message that you’ve sent, every time you told me that you missed me and loved me. The times that you told me you wanted to be with me. I believed you. I thought that maybe after 3 years things had changed, I’ve grown, I’ve healed in a lot of ways, I thought you had too. Unfortunately I was wrong.

You ghosted me, for no reason that I can think of – just one day it was ‘poof’ and you were gone. I tried messaging you and no response, for a while I thought maybe you were busy and just couldn’t talk. Then I realized it was purposeful. You were choosing to ignore me. Choosing to not respond. And that, that hurt. I wish you had never messaged me again if that was your intention.

I’m not going to post the screenshots of our conversations, no one else needs to know what we said to one another. I know and you know. I know what you said, I know what I believed, but only you know what you meant. 

I’ve deleted you but I haven’t blocked you – I’m keeping the door open just in case you change your mind and decide to respond. 

I know these letter are meant to be unsent but I’m going to send you the link to this site and let you read them for yourself if you want – maybe you’ll respond, maybe you won’t. But I’ll know that I tried. I tried letting you in, I tried to restart things with you which is what you said you wanted, I tried. Sometimes it’s not do or do not but it is try. 

My DMs are open to you, my phone line is open to you – you just need to tell me the truth instead of telling me what you think I want to hear. 

-S

I only miss you when I drink

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Dear N,

I guess it makes sense that I miss you the most when I drink, I look back and realize now that I felt like I needed to drink before I saw you. I knew what you wanted from me every time you asked me to come over and I needed the alcohol to steal my nerves so I could relent. You only ever wanted one thing from me, even back then.

Every day I ask the same question countless times “have you ever been put in a situation where someone was making you feel like you couldn’t say ‘no’?” And I hate that you are one of the reasons I answer “yes” in my own head every time I ask it. I knew it 18 years ago and I know now that I could never say ‘no’ to you and have it be respected.

I realize now that I was nothing but a means to an end for you. I was just something for you to mark off your “bucket list” from 18 years ago and not someone you ever actually cared about then, or now. But I realize that we should have left things in the past. I shouldn’t have restarted anything with you, the first time, the second or this last time. You once called me “the love of your life” but that was a lie too. Everything between us is clouded by lies. Lies about how you felt, what you wanted, and even who you were.

I write this more to remind myself of your deplorable behavior than to grant you any kind of forgiveness or absolution. So that in 3 months, 6 months, a year, 5 years, or however long it takes for you to “miss” me I can look back and remember all the abuse you heaped on me and find the strength to ignore the message.

You’ve known me for over half our lives yet it’s painfully obvious that you never truly knew me at all. If you did you would have never thought so poorly of me as to make the accusations and threats that you did. If you knew me at all you would have remembered that I am someone who loves deeply and without condition, I am someone who gives from the heart and not out of whatever twisted motivation you ascribed to my generosity, I am someone who cannot bear to see my friends suffering if I know I can do something to help, I am the person who will pick you up off the ground when you’ve been crying and dust you off so you can remember that you are an amazing person, but above all else you would know that I am not someone you ever need to be afraid of or worried will harm you.

You become what you surround yourself with; energies, personalities, words and traits have a way of rubbing off. Unfortunately you insist on surrounding yourself with a very toxic, narcissistic individual who has poisoned you and twisted you to become more like her.

But I know you, I know the you who laughed at my jokes, the you who watched TV with me on the couch, the you who defended me when no one else did, the you who cares about family and friends, the you who has a passion and the you who has dreams and goals. But that you is gone now and it’d be easy to say that she’s the reason why that is but the reality is that you were the one who lost all of that somewhere along the way. You allowed her to infect you with her poison until you didn’t know any other way.

And that you is the one I had to drink to tolerate, because when I drink I remember the you that I know and not the one that lied to me, and said hateful hurtful things to me. I needed to drink so I could relax enough to not remember that you weren’t going to respect my ‘no’ despite how many times I said it. The more I drank the easier it was for me to just pretend that I was enjoying it and it let me get out of my head enough to convince you. Because I figured out that was the easiest way to get it to end, was to pretend to enjoy it. You treated me like a plaything, something you could set off to the side when I no longer served your purpose. By the end of our ‘relationship’ you weren’t even pretending that you wanted me for any other reason.

Hate is easy, it would be so nice if I could just hate you. But I don’t. At the end of the day I remember who you truly are not just who you’ve become. So, in 3 months, 6 months, a year, 5 years, however long it takes I’ll still read your message when you tell me you “miss” me. And I’ll have to remind myself of all the things that you put me through, all the things you said to me and hope I have the strength to ignore you.

Love Always,
S

Delete, Block, Move Forward

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Social media makes it so easy for us to remain “connected” to those who hurt us and those who seek to remain at the periphery of our lives no matter if they deserve to be there or not. I recently went through my Facebook “Friends” and Instagram “Followers” to remove those who were only hanging around the periphery and would no longer be contributing to my path forward – this is my letter to those who were removed.

To the people I “unfriended”,

While walking on the path to healing I’m learning there are those who will walk beside me, invested in my healing and learning the new me and those who are too invested in my past and the person that I was and not the person that I am now.

Those who are too invested in keeping me in the past have no place in my present or my future. The person that you knew, no longer exists and those who aren’t a part of my healing don’t deserve to watch the progress. Every person that I’ve met in life has played a part in writing my story. Some of you wrote a line, some wrote a page, others wrote an entire chapter and I need to be able to write new lines, new pages, and new chapters. It’s not about erasing the past, it’s about recognizing those who can contribute to my new story – the one that remains to be written. Those who can’t contribute to that story in a healthy and productive way don’t deserve to bear witness to the new storylines.

We all walk along the path of life, meeting those along the way who will make an impact, positive or negative, on us. I’ve chosen to remove those who have a negative impact on me from my life and that extends to no longer allowing them access to me and my life. Social media is a way for us to remain invested in the lives of everyone we’ve ever known and sometimes that investment isn’t in the best interests of anyone involved. We cling to the photos of ex-partners to see if they’re miserable without us and are hoping against all hope that they are somewhere out there checking up on us too. We post photos displaying the “good” parts of us and our lives, carefully crafting the “perfect” image that we want to portray. We click through the photos of others and see the image they want us to see, not bearing witness to the messiness and chaos that exists in between.

I’m no longer interested in hiding the chaos and the messiness, I’ve spent too long crafting the “perfect” image and hoping that others will not look too deeply. Part of healing and moving forward is removing those who I worry won’t accept the chaos and realizing that they don’t want to watch me move forward but are too interested in anchoring me in the past.

This isn’t a judgement on any one of you as an individual, I’m not here to label anyone as “good” or “bad” but instead I’m reevaluating the parts that you all play in my life and whether those parts contribute to my past or my future. If you were a part of the group who anchored me to my past then I’m sorry to say that I need to let you go in order to move forward.

I am reclaiming my power and that means extending forgiveness to those who hurt me in even the smallest of ways – forgiveness doesn’t mean reconciliation, nor does it mean absolution. I can forgive you for writing the lines and pages of my story that hurt me and left me with scars that I am trying to heal from while also recognizing that you no longer play a part in my life. I wish you well, hope your life is everything you want it to be but just know that I am no longer accepting you to play a part in mine – even from the sidelines.

All the best,

S

To the people who “taught” me my hardest lessons…

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To All the Teachers I’ve Had Before,

I realize it’s been over 15 years since we’ve seen or spoken to one another but as I work through healing from things which have happened in the past I’ve been reaching out to those individuals who had a major impact on my life all those years ago. It would be easy for me to be angry with you for the things which happened during my formative years but I’m choosing instead to extend you forgiveness.

I know it’s been over a decade since I set foot inside those doors and my hope for the students who walk those halls is that things have changed since I was there because the school system I was a part of failed me. I know there were those of you who tried to reach me, even when I felt unreachable. The ones who saw me for the person I was and acknowledged the pain I was so obviously feeling – the chemistry teacher who had no problem with me abruptly walking out of the classroom because there was a family emergency and I needed to be reachable in case something happened, the history teacher who’d let me leave campus and drive to visit a sick relative in the nursing home so I could spend extra time with them in their last last couple of years, and the social sciences teacher who actively stood up to my bullies and stood up for me saying that behavior was unacceptable and would not be tolerated.

But for every teacher who tried there were those of you who failed me. From the school counselor who saw the cuts on my arms and instead of getting me help just stared at me slack jawed and let me walk back out, never checking back in with me to see what they could do to help. Or the gym teacher who allowed me to be bullied by his own son and his friends because it was easier to turn a blind eye to the behavior than to be a teacher or parent and to force them to change. And the English teacher who instead of encouraging my love of reading and the written word tried to get me to dumb myself down because it was making the other students uncomfortable, telling me that reading the books I was reading was intimidating the other students and my vocabulary use was unsettling them.

For every teacher who would stand up to my bullies and try to shut them down there were three more who stood by and merely watched everything that went down. Every time when I was crying out for help, but instead of offering support you labeled me a “problem” and with that – you failed me. You saw me, saw what was happening and chose to look the other way.

I can look back now and acknowledge that things were different when I was in school. We didn’t have the research in to the damage bullying does on a child 15 – 20 years ago. I want you to know that I forgive you, that’s the point of this message. You had a responsibility to protect me all those years ago but I can look back with clearer vision now and see that you had your hands tied in many ways. You were hamstrung by being in a small school district, without access to the resources that may have existed in larger districts. I acknowledge my own part in what transpired, I wasn’t forthcoming in asking for help and seeking out the resources I needed to succeed.

My hope is that you took what happened to me and learned from me so that no other student in the school lives through what I had to endure. I hope no other student has to witness their teachers stand by and witness the bullying with no support. I hope the next student you have who skips more classes than they attend isn’t merely labeled “depressed” and asked to get a doctor’s note. I hope those students are given the support they need to thrive in school. I hate that I needed to be a learning experience for you but I sincerely hope that I was, because that means the road was a little bit easier for the next student.

I struggled with being able to be in a classroom for many years and being near a school building terrified me but I want you to know that with my own hard work and healing I was able to graduate from college later in life and have been working at a job that I love and am successful at for almost 5 years. I am married to a wonderful person who supports me and demonstrates to me that I am worthy even when I feel worthless. I have thrived when I could have chosen to wither on the vine and I did that on my own.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean absolution, I forgive you for failing but please know that I don’t absolve you of responsibility. Students deserve to be honored and protected when they walk through your doors and I hope you are able to provide a safe space for all students. I hope you know now that words are powerful and that choosing not to act has a bigger impact than stepping up and stepping in. I hope you are all able to live a life that you can be proud of and that you are able to find fulfillment. I forgive you for the things that you said and did all those years ago and I wish you all light and love in your lives.

Sincerely,

S

Class of 2006

The 3rd Strike I Didn’t Know Was Coming

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Dear N,
4 months…that’s the length of time between when you abandoned me the last time and when you texted me and told me that you missed me again. 4 months is also the length of time it took for me to let my guard down just a little bit and for you to decide I wasn’t worth the effort again.
I don’t know much about sports but I do know that you get 3 strikes before you’re out and apparently I was on my 3rd strike with you and didn’t even know it. I’m here again wondering what happened between us that put you in a position of thinking your only way out was to ghost me again and just stop talking to me. After 72 hours of trying to talk to you and having my messages ignored I finally got the hint.
They say that hurt people hurt people and I guess you and I are just two hurt people who can’t stop hurting each other. I was willing to give you space and time to figure out what was bothering you and I foolishly hoped you would start talking to me again but I guess I was wrong. I was willing to acknowledge my part in hurting you and trying to figure out the path forward but I couldn’t do it alone. It would be easy to blame you for everything and paint myself as the victim of another person who abandoned me. But I wouldn’t do that, it’d be tainting the memories of everything we shared and shrouding it in a veil of hatred and pain.
I loved you, I still love you – that hasn’t changed since the first time I saw you 18 years ago. I don’t know when it changed for you, but somewhere along the way I stopped being someone you loved. I don’t blame you, I’m hard to love. But you were always willing to try until now. I don’t know what happened and maybe I never will but it was the bottom of the 9th with 2 outs and I was willing to swing for the fences. Unfortunately I didn’t know that I had 2 strikes and was going for my 3rd.
Just please know that I still love you and miss you. I’m willing to figure it out but only if you are right there beside me.

Love,
S

How a Model Call Was a Reclamation of My Power

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I am someone who was told their whole life that being “sexy” was sinful… don’t show too much skin, you might excite the male gaze. When in reality – that “male gaze” shouldn’t have been looking in my direction anyway.

I surrendered so much of my power to people who told me that I wasn’t “hot” or “sexy” because I didn’t fit the stereotype of what the female body should look like. I surrendered power to people who told me that I couldn’t dress the way I wanted, look the way I wanted because it was “sinful” and I was inviting the “male gaze” with how I looked. I made myself smaller and less than I was because it somehow meant “men will only want one thing” from me because of how I was behaving.

Sexy is an empowering feeling and I allowed other people to tell me that I didn’t “deserve” to feel sexy. The messaging I received was that I needed to adapt my look and behavior to what was “acceptable” and “appropriate” without regard to how I wanted to look and feel.

I was scrolling through Instagram and saw a model call from a local boudoir photographer, in an effort to boost their portfolio and online presence they wanted people of all shapes and sizes to come in and be photographed. I hesitated, I’d thought about doing boudoir photos in the past but the messages I’d received my whole life told me that I wasn’t good enough. I’d had so many people and voices in my head telling me that I wasn’t good enough, pretty enough, sexy enough to be photographed like that especially if the photographer was going to be using it as a way to boost their portfolio. No way would they want to use me as a model.

But then there was my own voice in my head, after many years of therapy and healing, telling me that I was good enough. That it’s okay to be me. That being me was good enough, that she was sexy and beautiful and all the things I’d been told I wasn’t for so many years weren’t true. So, I answered the photographer’s call for models and set up a time to go in to their studio and have a bunch of photos taken.

And I’m so glad that I did because I looked AMAZING! It was an all afternoon process of getting my hair and makeup done first then going to the studio and getting the actual photos taken but the photographer was great and really hyped me up for every shot. It was incredibly empowering and freeing. This was something that I was doing for myself and only myself. I needed to shut the voices down that I’d listened to for so long and this was one way to do it.

Taking back your power after trauma is hard and you’re going to doubt yourself along the way. That’s okay. Your reptilian brain is processing the information first and not letting you realize that you have all the power now. You may not have had it before but you have it now. Go forth and reclaim it!

What’s In a Name?

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I’ve been seeing a TikTok trend recently where people use part of the “That’s Not My Name” song by The Ting Tings and overlay the wrong “names” they’ve been called. It’s a lot of celebrities talking about the characters they’ve played and pet parents poking fun at the nicknames they’ve given their pets. But it got me thinking, what’s in a name?

Shakespeare demonstrated the irrelevancy of naming things, “that which we call a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet”. But in my own healing journey and my work with transgender individuals I’ve come to realize that names have an enormous power. The name you choose to call yourself and have others call you by is deeply personal and subjective. Those of us like myself who have our long, formal names get to choose if we prefer to have others use it or if we choose to have them use a shortened “nickname” version. For every Robert there are those who go by Rob or Bob, for every Andrew there’s a Andy, and for every Jessica there’s a Jess or Jessie. I know individuals who refuse to go by a shortened nickname and there are those who refuse to recognize their formal names.

I first discovered the power behind names when the people in my life who hurt me would switch up which name they would use when talking to me. I learned quickly that the name they called me by was a pretty reliable indicator for what type of mood they were in that day. If they were in a good mood I had nicknames but if they were in a bad mood I’d suddenly be referred to by the name on my birth certificate. We’ve all had the experience of our parents calling us by our full name when we’re in trouble, this was different. I learned that when my abusers would call me by my legal name they were angry or upset about something and I needed to give them a wide berth. I also had people who refused to call me by anything other than my legal name because that’s what was proper. Despite my requests to be referred to by a shortened nickname.

I’ve been in relationships where I would be able to judge what type of mood my partner was in by their use of pet names like “honey”, “babe”, “sweetie”, etc. If they were in a bad mood about something, even if it wasn’t anything I had personally done, they’d call me by my name and I’d know that I’d be in trouble. When a certain ex would call me by my full name he was using it as a punishment and to let me know that he held a power over me. I know this because he told me so, he told me that he could call me whatever he liked whether I liked it or not because he had all the power.

In my healing journey I’ve learned that I can reclaim some of my own power by choosing whether or not to use the names of my abusers. In my therapy sessions I referr to some of them by name, some are referred to by what they did to me, and some are given their own nicknames. By my refusal to say their name during these sessions I’m removing some of the power they hold over me because they no longer have a name in my world. They’re just some powerless, insignificant piece of my story that I’m rewriting during my healing. For some people, naming their abusers has the same effect. For me though, these are people who I had to refer to by name so many times in my life that the name became synonymous with the pain and trauma.

I say all of this because I recently had a conversation with a good friend where I told them they’re one of the few people in my life that I allow to call me by a certain nickname. I allow them to call me by one of the names my abusers used to call me by because I trust this individual so implicitly that it is creating a more positive correlation in my mind with that name. That is part of reclaiming my power, reclaiming that name. I know this person won’t hurt me because they have demonstrated that they care about me too much to ever knowingly or purposely hurt me. Which is a welcome change from the people who have used that name in the past.

Shakespeare might have thought that names were irrelevant but I’ve learned they’re entirely relevant and more importantly they’re powerful.

How a Bag of Takeout Was a Reclamation of My Power

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For the first time in 3 months I ate food from one of my favorite restaurants. While this might not seem like a big deal, when you live with Complex PTSD your life becomes about navigating triggers and this restaurant was a trigger I didn’t even know existed.

3 months ago I met the person I reference in one of my earlier letters at this restaurant. We’d been apart for 17 years and decided to go out as friends and catch up on our lives. As someone who struggles with complex PTSD and relational trauma I have issues cultivating and maintaining healthy relationships and boundaries. Unfortunately, this person seized upon my vulnerabilities (wether he knew it or not) and after that night began a “relationship” with me. I use the quotation marks around the word because looking back now, I can see what happened between the two of us wasn’t a relationship, it was a way for him to use me and I allowed it.

Which brings me to the restaurant. I love Olive Garden, there’s nothing like the unlimited bread sticks and carbohydrate loaded happiness one can find in a bowl of pasta. But, this was where I met him that night and this was where he whispered all those things in my ear that my traumatized brain so desperately wanted to hear and have be true. That night was when I started allowing myself to be used by him for his own selfish gratification and needs without listening to what my head was saying and establishing healthy boundaries.

So, I couldn’t bring myself to go back. When he abruptly ended things, I was back to being in a dark place mentally and I reacted in ways that were less than healthy and ideal. I took his behavior of ghosting me as a judgement on me as a person and absorbed the pain and decided that once again it was something I had done wrong that had caused another person to abandon me, again. I took it as a personal failing that he had abandoned me, obviously if I’d been better, prettier, more attentive, more flexible, just better than I was then he wouldn’t have left. I was reliving and replaying all of the times my family had walked away from me over the years and taking on all of that pain all over again. So, I avoided one of my favorite restaurants because it reminded me of that night and brought up all those feelings again. It was triggering me and I didn’t even realize it.

So, tonight, for the first time in 3 months and a month after he ghosted me I ordered takeout from the restaurant. I couldn’t bring myself to go inside the restaurant but at least this was a step in the right direction. I could be in the parking lot, smell the smell of the bread sticks, hear the cheesy Italian music being piped through the speakers, and not want to crawl out of my own skin and hide.

I reclaimed just a little bit of my power tonight and it felt great.

To the Person Who Helped Write the First Lines on the Pages in My Story

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Dear M,

We haven’t seen each other in over 5 years and we haven’t spoken in at least 2. You were always someone who drifted in and out of my life starting from the time I was born so at first I took for granted that you weren’t in my life. After some time I grew accustomed to the silence and the absence and found myself in a better place mentally to where I felt like I could do the hard work to begin healing. So, I blocked you from contacting me. I deleted you from all of my social media, you couldn’t call or text me anymore, and I told the important people in my life that I no longer wanted you to have access to any information about me. This is what truly going “no contact” means when trying to heal from trauma and abuse.

I’ve been working on healing from a lot of the things that happened to me when I was younger and I’m learning what a big part you played in shaping how I view the world and my place in it. Choosing to be “no contact” with you wasn’t a choice I made to punish you, it was a choice I made to pardon myself and release the hurt and anger I’d be feeling for too long.

You were always the uncle who claimed to be jetting off to parts unknown, going on amazing adventures, meeting new people, experiencing new things. And to a child, that world seemed so exciting and fun. You’d come back from your adventures with tall tales from your trip and bringing presents to make up for all the missed birthdays and Christmases. You’d show up with promises of taking me on adventures and spending time with me, but you never followed through.

Looking back on it now, you were one of the first people who taught me that people are untrustworthy and unreliable. You showed me throughout my entire childhood that promises were meaningless and taught me to mistrust everyone and that anyone who promised me adventure would go back on their word and in the end, I’d still be home alone.

But these weren’t the only lessons you taught me, you also taught me to hate myself. You’d come back from your adventures and one of the first things you’d always say to me was “have you put on weight?” You taught me that my worth was based on how much I weighed, that it was in how I looked. Commenting on someone’s weight and appearance is hurtful under the best of relationships but to say these things to a 5 year old, an 8 year old, a blossoming 13 year old is soul crushing and gave me a distrust of anyone who would tell me that I was beautiful just the way I am, that being me was okay. I learned that it’s not okay to be me starting at age 5 and carried that pain with me for the last 30 years. Saying to a 15 year old girl that she’d be prettier if she’d loose that baby fat and no boys were ever going to look at her unless she started taking better care of her appearance. And you taught me that I was only ever going to be worthwhile to a partner if I was attractive or “beautiful”. But, you also didn’t want me to think of myself as being beautiful did you? Because if I had the self-esteem and self-worth to see myself as beautiful just the way I was then you wouldn’t have been able to say or do the things that you did to me.

I say all of this not to rake you across the proverbial coals and take you to task for the things you said and did. All of the pain and trauma you inflicted on me all those years ago I carried with me in to every relationship I’ve had, including the one with myself. But going “no contact” with you cut off that tie and allowed me to reclaim some of the power that I lost over the years hating myself and distrusting the world. I forgive you for a lot of the things you said and did, in all honesty I will never be able to forgive everything but I can forgive some. In forgiving you I do not absolve you of the responsibility, no matter what your religion teaches forgiveness does not equal absolution. Forgiveness releases me from the pain and allows me to move forward knowing that you will have no place in my life.

You’ve lost a lot recently but I know that you don’t view these losses for what they truly are, condemnations of you and your behavior. Your wife didn’t leave you because of her own failings, she left because, like me, she finally saw you for who you are and reclaimed her own power in the process. But I know you don’t see it that way, just know that I will be by her side cheering her on and supporting her while she goes through the process of healing from your horrific behavior. Your children are torn, because you are their parent and I know what it means to love a parent and hate them for their behavior at the same time. Please know that I will be there, supporting them in whatever way I can to make sure they can distance themselves from you too. Healing from trauma is hard but I promise I will be the adult for them, that you never were for me. I will do everything I can to protect them, believe them when they disclose the hurt and abuse they’ve suffered, and more importantly be a safe space for them to fall apart when they need it. All the things adults should be for children, and all the things you never were for me.

I’m working to reclaim my power, heal the hurt, and move forward. I can’t do any of that with the spectre of you hanging over my head. So while I will be there for your wife and children there is no relationship between you and I anymore. I do not want anything to do with you. I’m releasing myself from the pain and allowing myself to form the family I should have had from the beginning. I’m doing that by surrounding myself with a select group of friends who support me, who tell me I’m beautiful, I’m worthwhile, and that it’s okay to be me. Family isn’t about DNA it’s about love and kindness. Two things I never received from you.

I do not wish you harm, I do not wish you pain. I wish you were capable of love and kindness but I don’t believe you will ever be able to genuinely show those things. I release you from my orbit and send you off in to the world, hoping that maybe this letter helps you understand just a small amount of the pain you inflicted on me so you can go forth and no longer cause pain.

Forgiveness is not reconciliation and it’s not absolution. Forgiveness allows me to move forward without being trapped in the cycle of self hatred and lothing that I’ve lived with for far too long.

Be Well,

S

To the One Who I Kept Letting Back In

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Dear M,

I’ve reached a point in my healing journey where I have been forced to confront some ugly truths about myself and my behavior. The biggest realization that I’ve come to is that I have to reclaim some of my power that I’ve lost over the years through relationships with toxic people. You and I have a very toxic relationship which I’ve tried to ignore for far too long and allowed you to claim way too much power over me because of it.

You and I are not good for one another. I keep hoping that you’re going to change and become the person that I believe you to be and that’s simply not something you are capable of doing. I have tried to help you and that’s been to my own detriment. You are the person that you are and not likely to change and that is simply someone who is not a good person for me to have in my life. I have allowed you to claim too much power over me in the interest of keeping you in my life for selfish reasons. I became so accustomed to chaos in my life during my childhood that I sought out people and relationships which emulated that chaos and validated my experience that shaped my paradigm of how the world exists. But I’ve discovered that I have to relearn how to have relationships that are not chaotic and toxic and strive to validate a new paradigm that there is good in the world and that people can be healthy for me. I can’t do that if you are still on the periphery for me to come to when I need to seek out a chaotic and toxic experience.

I forgive you for the hurt and pain that you’ve inflicted on me over the years. I need to be able to move forward in my life and I can’t do that if I’m still clinging to the pain and trauma I experienced at your hands. My forgiveness doesn’t mean that I’m absolving you of any responsibility for the pain but I’m reclaiming my power and releasing the anger that I’ve held on to for far too long. It would be easy for me to remain angry with you for everything that you’ve done but that doesn’t help me and I need to heal from my experiences if I’m going to be able to move forward.

I’m at peace with how we’re ending things now. I’m going to move forward and build the life that I know I deserve without the specter of you hanging over my head. I hope you know now that words are powerful and are more careful and considerate in what you choose to say to those around you. I wish you to know that your anger has an impact on those around you and when you choose to become violent other people suffer. But most of all I hope you are able to live a life that you can be proud of and that you are able to find fulfillment. I forgive you for the things that you said and did in the past and while I have no desire to have any sort of friendship with you just know that I wish you light and love in your life.

Best,

S