Leaving Toxic Relationships
An open letter to the love that left me broken,
I wish I believed you when you said I should hate you. When you leave a relationship, you're not only just leaving the person, you're leaving their behaviors you've grown accustomed to as well. The people don’t follow us around for the rest of eternity, their actions do.
I now live free from your imprisonment, but with the cost of my sanity. I spent countless hours obsessing over you after you consumed every one of my waking thoughts, but now that I'm alone, what am I to think about?
Every time I let go of you, I’m letting go of pieces of myself. I find comfort in a blank mind now, because everything I loved about myself you took from me and ruined it. I forfeited every detailed and unique aspect of my consciousness because I can't think anymore without thinking of you again. I shut off my creativity because I can’t think of anything new that inspires me as you did. I indulge in any substance that can even remotely make me feel the way you made me feel. I can’t think for longer than two seconds without you appearing in my mind again, so I stop thinking, so I can stop feeling.
I thought I knew love because that’s how I felt around you, but now I want to rid myself of everything you’ve touched. I don’t know how to care for myself because I only cared about you and now that I’m alone, I never want to be the same idiot who you took advantage of. I hate myself for allowing this all to happen. I want to punish myself because I thought I knew myself. I thought I was proud of myself and all I had accomplished. I even thought I loved myself until you came along and all of my defenses collapsed. I had everything I wanted in one place. You showed me things I couldn't have even imagined. But now, every sweet memory has turned bitter because everything you did for me was honestly only ever meant for you. You made me think I knew how to feel love but all you really taught me was hate. You saw someone who would buy every lie you sold and I did it with everything I possessed.
Everything was gone without any proper goodbyes and the closure I craved became a non-existent idea, so it felt impossible to move on. Ages have passed, but since I still think of you, I tend to believe I miss you. I still look for you in every single stranger I meet, hoping to have a scrape of you again in my life. I throw myself in front of monsters because, maybe, the pain they will give me will feel just as good as yours did. My ideas of love are plagued by your previous selfish pursuits and I’m not sure if I can even allow myself to learn to do better. Everything new that seems too good for me, I reject, since your voice stays ringing in my ears, whispering that I don’t deserve anything good or pure in my life. If I move on, I prove you wrong by learning to accept real love and joy, but that far away reality seems unattainable. The doubts that you left behind in my mind are all I have left of you. And if I eventually do better, all your evil doings will finally be replaced by superior heroes in my mind. Yet, I still don’t seem to wish to let my only evidence of you go.
We choose the love we think we deserve, so when somebody in our lives completely diminishes our self-value and respect, we’re left in a position that sets us up for failure. Many difficulties come with leaving a toxic relationship, but why does no one mention it’s never easy afterwards? Why did no one tell me I would still be hurting? I don’t think life will ever be easy again. I thought the separation would be the hardest part, but it’s the learning to live again without you that is beyond difficult. I want to love myself the way I used to pour love into you, and I want to make myself happy. My tears are still only reserved for you. Each moment we continue not to speak I feel myself going backwards because I punish myself now in your place. I’m so desperate for your voice I would be willing to accept the harsh words and irrational behaviors one more. If you were screaming at me again, at least I would have you in front of me.
But I’m done.
You’ve already stolen so much from me, my time needs to be salvaged. It’s a slow, painful process, learning to live on my own again. It’s a lot of work to be able to re-learn self-love, but since you made me hate every inch of myself, coming back and loving it all over again will just make me stronger. One day you will be nothing more than a distant memory from youth. You will never change because all you know how to do is suffer and bring everyone down with you. But after you killed me, I am coming back to life, better than the way you found me. Thank you for hurting me because now I can distinguish a real man compared to you. Thank you for lying to me, because my inquisitiveness just made my mind sharper. Thank you for never apologizing so I could learn to forgive on my own. Thank you for controlling every aspect of my life, because now that I’m gone, I have never felt freer. We all must learn from our past without tethering ourselves to it, so I forgive you for everything, and now I can’t wait to forget you.