a letter to someone i used to love

hi,

I’m happy now. I’m screaming from the rooftops; did you hear me? I am happy now and I no longer need your love- need your hands to embrace my body and tell me I am beautiful. Through gritted teeth and wandering hands you once said you loved me, and I would say I couldn’t love anyone until I loved myself. I remember how you’d scoff, trail your hands to my sides and shake your head. “I know you’re big, but I love you” You’d say and it would satisfy me for long enough. And then I began to realise what you were saying. Being myself was a side piece for you, you loved me despite that. I think now, I know, that I wanted to be loved because of who I was, not in spite of it. And love, that was our downfall.

Loving came so easily to you. Like a trick of the trade, the words spewed from your mouth like your mother tongue, they were all too familiar. And I remember how I would drown on lonely nights in empty words you left on my pillow- like my only lifeline, I depended on them and you used my vulnerability like a tool, you hammered away at my toughest points until they became my weakest. You used your love in a vicious way and made me blind to anything else.

I remember once, we were laying side by side and perhaps you’ve blocked this from your oh-so-manicured memory; you cried. I told you I was too young to love and to know love well and perhaps, I told you love didn’t exist, perhaps all those years ago, I was cynical, I was bitter from years of having no love at my feet and so I told you it didn’t exist. You cried. Tears, like venom dripped down your cheeks and I realised, suddenly my opinion was not one to be heard. You silenced me, choked me in your tears, I could no longer say how I felt.

I was always sceptical, I didn’t understand how anyone could love me with my body, and my face and I didn’t feel beautiful and I didn’t feel like I was welcome to happiness so I realise I put a wall up that you could not break down, despite your tools, I was the great wall of China and my bricks towered above you and went on for miles, you could not catch up. With a smile, you would tell me you liked ‘bigger girls’ - that ‘ass and tits’ were what made it for you and so I became afraid to take my shirt off. Because, if it was all ass and tits for you, then you wouldn’t like my stomach, nor the cellulite climbing up my thighs or the stretchmarks rocking across my hips- you didn’t want a big girl, you wanted something to hold on to. And I understand that considering the pain you’d gone through all those years before it must have been nice, to have something that felt like yours for a little while.

When I was with you, love was not something that came easily to me. But I remember how I felt when we kissed that first time. Leicester square; my friend was dancing to a busker and I could only think about your lips but love was not something I understood and I reckon I played with yours like a toddler.

I am sorry I didn’t feel loved when I was near you and I apologise for not loving myself enough to let you in but I’m here to tell you it broke my heart when you caught up and moved on. I want to let you know that months after you’d gone, I still shattered when I found your jumper under my bed and I felt unlovable when I came across the book of photos you had made me. I also wanted to tell you that after years, I don’t always look at my body in disgust anymore. After so long, sometimes, I smile at my reflection and there are days that I love myself so wholly I believe that your love was just a walkway. It’s taken a long time and I have fallen countless steps and bruised my knees and broken bones but I’m here to tell you, you’re no longer my last thought before bed and I no longer get an ache in my chest when I think about you.

I think, after so long I can finally say that I’m over the emotional trauma you left in your absence and I don’t want to know you anymore. Finally, I love my body for what it is and I’m ready to be loved by someone else and you have no idea how good it feels to want something other than you, you have no idea how nice it feels to feel warmth in my chest over somebody else.

Thank you always, for being that step in my boardwalk, without your ‘love’ I might be behind in my journey. But this is my letter goodbye, this is me, setting you free.

#letter #love #personal #journey