You Need To Forgive Yourself For Hurting Me

Our break up came out of nowhere. One week, you were meeting my father. The next, you were telling me that you needed to focus on yourself—a process that you decided left no room for me in your life.

Blindsided doesn’t even begin to describe how I felt that bleak morning last November. I walked out of your building with shallow breaths and tear-stained cheeks, chastising myself for giving love another shot only to be proven foolish for trying.

I remember sitting in the dark with you that very same weekend, begging for you to take me back. Your voice was cold and unrecognizable as you declined. Your words were coated with a certain bitterness, settling in the air with an uncomfortable heaviness. This was not the person I had, and still, loved.

A few weeks later, I stopped by your place to return some of your things, and we ended up chatting for a bit. With our friend groups so heavily intertwined, it was difficult figuring out how to proceed in this newly separated state. I confessed that I missed spending time with you, and wished we could go back to the way we started: friends. You admitted that being friends felt wrong because you knew that you hurt me, and that hurting me wasn’t okay. Still, you promised to try harder.

Months passed and nothing changed. You did everything in your power to avoid me, sprinting to the other side of a room as soon as I walked in, and skipping social events with mutual friends altogether in fear that I might be there too. Every time I’d try to confront you about your actions, we’d only end up fighting, exchanging words I never thought we’d ever say to each other.

But life has a funny way of testing us, and now we find our social spheres tighter than ever. Seeing each other will become so unavoidable that it will soon just become the norm. It’s a reality that I dread facing, because I don’t know how things will unfold. I’ve come to terms with the fact that you aren’t—and perhaps never will be—comfortable with being friends. All I ask for is civility.

I don’t know how much emotional baggage you still carry, but this is me unloading it for you. I know it’s not my responsibility to do so, but if it will make both of our lives easier, so be it.

I absolve you of the guilt you have so steadily nurtured in your heart over the past few months. I have distanced myself from the pain I felt the morning you broke my heart, and the months that followed. I hope you will too. I have forgiven you for the hurt you caused me, and now, it’s time for you to forgive yourself.

I don’t want you to see me as a haunting reminder of the pain you caused someone you once loved. I don’t want you to look at me and think about how broken we’ve become without even trying.

The suffering we both endured—though it may have been different for each of us—is in the past, and I urge you to keep it there. I am not asking you to forget. I am simply asking you to move forward.

Don’t let one hurtful act define us forever. Use it as a starting point to make things better.