I do not forgive you.
I am told that forgiveness is a gift to oneself, but in this case it would be an injustice. Because when I remember what you did to me, I see myself as something terrible. Do you remember cracking open my ribcage to reveal that red, muscular organ within, and leaving it there, exposed, for any passing bird of prey to pluck free and claim? Think how many meals my bloody heart would provide for those chicks. Lucky birds.
And I never knew I was an ocean until you came along. Alone and isolated, waves flowed from me, a seemingly endless saltwater cascade. It is no exaggeration for me to claim I cried, every night, for eight months. Did you know it was possible to cry 244 days in a row? I thought, surely the pain will dull, and surely I will convert from a liquid back to a solid once more. I was wrong.
If anyone had dared to impugn your name, your character, your honor, I would have thrown down a glove and demanded satisfaction. No one was capable of coming close to who I knew you were, and my conviction never wavered. Even when I lived the aftermath of your devastation, I believed you were so genuine, so unshakable, that you would return. I was wrong.
Closure is something I may never have: are you alive? In the state? Single or perhaps with someone who will never know the damage you have caused? Did you find your way to a real life or are you bogged down by your own failures? Did you run because you were scared? Did you leave because of something I did, or didn’t, do? I will never know.
I’m surprised by my own nothingness, as if I never knew I was a vessel until you filled me, and it is only when you leave that I discover I am empty. No one else can fill me, not the way you did, to the brim, but I have discovered someone can still drip, drip, drip in slowly. Will it ever become a torrent to rival you, one that overflows as you never did? I don’t know, but I will find out.
When I think of you now, I see a bad person: a wicked tongue liar, a destroyer of words, a pain too great to bear. But what does that make me? A gullible fool, a child undeserving of love, a shame too great to bear.
I don’t know if I believe anyone anymore. I am trying, but I will never allow myself to be opened up again, to be rendered in vivisection, vulnerable. Maybe I can be happy again, maybe I am with the person who is right for me, if you won’t have me. But that doesn’t change my mind.
I do not forgive you.
