Nikita Gill

Let me clear on this from one survivor to another, from one victim to another: You do not have to forgive anyone except yourself to start your healing journey. The person who hurt you, who abused you does not deserve your forgiveness, you deserve your own forgiveness.

Here is a hard thing to admit. Sometimes you are the most toxic person in the room. Sometimes, you have allowed the world to bring you down so much that you spew negativity.

You see, here is the brutal truth about people: they may have the absolute best intentions, but they will, like the leaves of the trees that promised they would never leave, drift away. They are temporary and unreliable. They have their own issues to work through, and no matter how much they promise they are going to be there for you, people will let you down. It’s human nature.

This is how true love happens. This is how lasting love happens. It is not the movie theatre type of romance, it is not grand gestures, and dying confessions. Love, real love, is in the quiet of a thunderstorm feeling safe.

Thank you because even with all the pain and the heartache and the pain, I do not regret you, you were not a mistake. You were not something to forget easily.

No, I am not going to sit here and pretend the problem was me when very clearly it was you. You don’t get to treat me like I am nothing but a fire you need to warm your hands by only to douse it out when the time has come to leave.

One day you will find someone who shows you that everything that scares you can be defeated.

You are blessed, you are, because you have something other people have given up, little realising how precious it is. Your kindness is the most wonderful thing about you and it comes from the softness in your heart, from feeling too much where others feel too little, from noticing the things that other people just pass by.