Dear You
Five years ago you took my trust.
For five years now I have lived with you near. Not quite visible but present in the background. The embodiment of my critical inner voice telling me I am not worthy. Endless times you have entered into my head to damage the positivity I am trying to keep.
Your arrival has tested my faith, in myself, love and us. You have been like a black fog drifting above us waiting to drip down and coke each one of us from happiness.
You made me question everything. Who am I? What is my worth? Why me? Why us? You made me dislike myself, hate myself and wish I was someone else. I am sad you had the power to do that to me. You made me look unkindly to others and ask why not them? What do they know and possess that I do not? I have cried endless tears and ached with the exhaustion of that pain.
Twice you came to test us, twice to test our forgiveness. The first time was the hardest. Yet in the shock, grief and darkness we clung to each other. Hard work and strong minds we repaired and offered acceptance of imperfection. Then you came again, your effect no less devastating.
You know less of this, you know less of me, nothing of us.
I have wanted to write many letters to you, about you. Early letters would have been unkind hurtful expressions of the pain you helped to cause. They would contain wishes that you feel it so that you would know how it felt to have your world torn apart, your love splintered and lost. I could write of the angry justification, the solitude of hurt or the desperate counsel sought to bring some relief. I could explain how physical it was, how my whole body washed with the effects of it. My skin, my hair, my racing heart and the dreadful debilitating insomnia which were all symptoms of my devastated mind.
Those letters do not need to be written here. We are furthest from you we have ever been. We have dedicated a new purpose and life which does not involve you. You are no longer in our future, my future. I have fought to keep from thoughts of you. I have broken you down in pixel form from my mind. Now you are blurred to slow resolution, invisible to those that do not know the full picture.
So now instead I will tell you of the love that pulled us back, our own and from others who showed compassion in the deepest of dark times. It is this love that gave us strength to hold on. We have found a deeper love to rebuild the foundations of our lives on.
So now i write to tell you of the beautiful rays of light that have shone through the cracks of darkness. We are in sunshine.
We held on to be here and while there will always be patches of shade, misunderstanding and acceptance to be sought i am not fearful anymore. We have seen each other naked in pain and walked through and out strong. Stronger now it seems. You did not break us.
I accept what has been will be part of our story but it will not define us, define me.
Writing this letter to you releases me from thoughts of you. I no longer need to think about you, say anything to you or listen to your inner critical voice. You are nothing in my future, our future. I am saying goodbye.
This letter writes of love, a chosen love and from it we will create new memories to shine through our lives.
Today we are free and reborn.
KR