I Forgive You And I Release You

I left the city this morning for what will be the last time in my foreseeable future. I’m crushed. One day, I’ll be together again. But I need you to understand the responsibility you have in this.

There are no consolations here. I’m sure you are already aware – that is the truth. I hope I don’t have to convince you that my life will never be the same. I will never be the same.

The closest thing to that consolation I’ll never get will be that I won’t have to see your profile on Hinge. Yes, I saw it. Not once, not twice, but three times. I guess what they say is true – bad things come in threes.

But this letter isn’t to condemn you for the irreparable damage you’ve done here. First it hurt, but then it changed me.

This letter is to bring to your attention all the things I’ve forgiven you for. I don’t wish to punish you. I wish to release you. And four years is too long for someone to go unheard. So today you will hear me.

I forgive you for exiling me from the only place I would have had a shot at a real future. I forgive you for robbing me of my home and my peace. For taking from me everything I worked so hard for. What I fought for, tooth and nail to build. Somewhere to keep me safe. That place that I built, to keep me hidden from all of the trauma this sick world has fatigued me with. I forgive you for the fact that despite not wanting to be here anymore, you stayed. You stayed when you should have gone. I forgive you for that.

I forgive you for making me do all of your dirty work. For making the calls you couldn’t, doing the things you wouldn’t. I sheltered you. From all of the friends we made together. I protected you from their ravenous gaze. I let you mourn my loss. In privacy. In my home. I forgive you for letting me bare that cross alone. For in my sorrow, I pieced together the most beautiful narrative. And when it was time, I gave the statement, on your behalf. I forgive you for hiding while I did that. I forgive you for cowering, instead of giving me the courtesy of telling them yourself that you weren’t in love with me. Anymore. I forgive you for it it were ever. I forgive you for the sham you manufactured, over all of this time, in an attempt to what I can now only speculate, was to make yourself feel less alone.

I forgive you for convincing me this was mutual in an attempt to spare my feelings, because you yourself couldn’t handle them. I forgive you for convincing me this was mutual, so that you could avoid giving me any real insight as to why you didn’t want me. I forgive you for convincing me this was mutual, to hide the fact that maybe you never really loved me at all. I forgive you for falsely claiming you did. Every day. For years. I forgive you for never saying it first, either. Lie or not.

I forgive you for not one single time, caring to ask how I felt or engage in any part of the utter collapse of my already broken family. When you know who, left for you know where, with you know who else. I forgive you for letting me run to them, that first night that you realized you had succeeded in making me believe this was mutual. I forgive you for letting me go and being subjected to the same abuse that made me so unfit for your own family. I forgive you for letting me do that, with no where else to go, while my home, my home, sat there. Vacant. While you drowned your own sorrow in smoke. Vacant. 

I forgive you for making no effort at all to curb the habits you helped me create. I forgive you for continuing to numb yourself with all of the things you cited as the weapons that had destroyed our bliss. I forgive you for not noticing that I tried. And had actually started to succeed. I forgive you for making me feel guilty when you finally did notice, that you yourself were the problem you let me think I was.

I forgive you for checking out without telling me. I forgive you for letting me think that every time something felt off, it was all in my head. I forgive you for watching me as I slipped away when my ”imagination” began to manifest into week long episodes of deep depressions and crippling anxieties. Those which absolutely ensured things would eventually fall apart. I forgive you for telling me you had checked out, only after it was too late for me to even attempt to rectify the situation. I forgive you for letting me make those attempts anyway, when you had no intention of taking any accountability for your own contributions. And after you had already decided in secret that it was too late.

I forgive you for asking my opinion on how to choose an engagement ring, just two nights before telling me you couldn’t do this anymore. Just two nights before it became clear that I would never be receiving one.

I forgive you for fucking me the way you did those last nights together. I forgive you for the fact that I’ll never again feel as whole as I did in those moments. And for the fact that they will be all I see when I dare to let someone else try and make me forget. I forgive you for fucking me like that, with no intention of taking any action whatsoever toward actually trying to work it out. I forgive you for fucking me life that whilst expecting the situation to repair itself. I forgive you for fucking me like that, despite knowing your mind had already been made up. I forgive you for coming to sleep next to me, after I realized, for myself, that we were done for good.

I forgive you for valuing me at a sum of fourteen hundred dollars. I forgive you for obliging me to accept it. I forgive you, just in case that actually made you feel better about it.

I forgive you for kissing me on the lips after telling my dad that we just grew apart. I forgive you for not having the spine to look him in the eye and tell him the truth – that you really just stopped loving me. Or maybe you never did. And I don’t blame you for that. I forgive you for it.

I forgive you for abandoning me in my darkest hour, in love or not.

I forgive you, and I release you.