*This piece contains themes of domestic abuse, emotional trauma, and psychological manipulation. Reader discretion is advised.

for the nights I rewrote the truth just to sleep

I still find myself writing to you. Not out of hope, not because I want reconciliation, those illusions died long ago, but because sometimes putting the words down is the only way to get them out of my chest. It’s not closure I’m after. It’s quiet. The kind of quiet you took from me. Most nights, I write letters like this and fold them up in my head, shove them into the drawer of things I don’t say out loud. Sometimes I tear them apart, piece by piece, hoping that if I destroy the words, I’ll destroy the grip you still have on me. But the truth is, the ink always runs, because I still cry. Not for you. Never again for you. I cry because I still find myself explaining things to a ghost who never really listened.

You told me once, “If I hit you, you must have done something to deserve it.” And I believed you. God help me, I believed you. I apologized for bleeding. I apologized for bruising. I apologized for your hands and your rage and your cruelty, like I was the one who summoned them. I should have screamed. I should have left. But I didn’t. I rewrote the truth every night just to survive the one that came before. I told myself you were hurting. I told myself you were trying. I told myself you would get better. But you didn’t. And now I’m still here, years later, learning how to be a man again. Unpacking the years of shrinking. Of silence. Of confusing love with survival and survival with worth. You trained me to tiptoe through the ruins of my own life and then blamed me for the mess.

I wanted to write that I forgive you. I really did. But I don’t. Not yet. Maybe not ever. Forgiveness feels a lot like surrender when your body still flinches at shadows and your nervous system still hasn’t learned that the war is over. I know you’ll never read this. I know you won’t care if you did. That part doesn’t matter. What matters is that I said it. That I wrote it. That I finally stopped rewriting it for your comfort and started writing it for mine.

This is a letter I’ll never send. Not because it’s meaningless, but because it’s mine. It belongs to the boy you broke, the man I’m becoming, and the parts of me that are still learning how to breathe again. He deserved better. He still does.

– Me

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The First Time I Didn’t Flinch