Part V · Reclamation
Letters I'll Never Send
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