You ruined parts of me
I am still trying to put back together.
And the hardest truth to swallow
is that I let you.
I let you get close enough
to learn every soft place,
every insecurity,
every little thing
I was afraid someone might use against me.
I handed you the parts of myself
I had spent years protecting
and trusted you to hold them gently.
I let you know me.
I let you love me.
I let myself believe
that being loved meant being safe.
But somewhere along the way,
you mistook my forgiveness for permission,
my patience for weakness,
and my love for something
you could keep testing
to see how much it would endure.
I learned to make excuses
for the things that hurt me.
To explain away the apologies
that never changed anything.
To call it a bad day,
a difficult season,
a rough patch.
Anything but what it was.
And perhaps that is what
I struggle with most.
Not that I loved you,
but that I spent so much time
trying to understand your cruelty
that I forgot I was allowed
to simply be hurt by it.
I wonder how many versions of myself
I had to abandon
just to make room for you.
How many times I swallowed my words,
how many tears I wiped away quietly,
how many times I convinced myself
that if I could just love you better,
you might finally learn
how to love me without hurting me.
But I am beginning to understand
that letting someone love you
is not giving them permission to hurt you.
I let you love me.
I never let you hurt me.
But you did anyway.
And I need to stop confusing
the trust I placed in you
with the choices you made
once you had it.
You got to leave
when you were finished hurting me.
You got to close the door,
walk away,
and become someone else’s
ordinary Tuesday.
Meanwhile,
I am still finding pieces of myself
in places I haven’t been able
to visit without remembering you.
I am still learning
that a raised voice
doesn’t always mean danger,
that silence isn’t always punishment,
that I don’t have to rehearse
every sentence before I speak.
I am still learning
that love shouldn’t feel
like something I have to survive.
And maybe I will never be
the exact person I was before you.
Maybe there are parts of me
that will always remember.
But I refuse to spend
the rest of my life
mistaking what you did to me
for who I am.
You left me with the pieces.
I suppose
I get to decide
what I make of them.
And this time,
I think I’ll put myself
back together
without making room
for you.