To the person who changed me.

You know, most of these letters would be something like, “I forgive you” or “Thank you for teaching me blahblahblah about myself” or anything similar.

But no.

I still don’t forgive you for all the craziness you put me through. I don’t forgive you for the things you made me think about myself, or what you did, or how others looked at me for months after that day.

Every day I wanted to die, to crumble in upon myself and let the world abandon me for a while, but I never got that grieving period.

I never got the chance to mourn the potential in our relationship. I never got the courage to stand up to you when something that I didn’t like was happening. I never was allowed to be my own person and do my own thing. You took that away from me. Everyone took that away from me.

You never realize how much you miss yourself until you can no longer be yourself, how much your family notices until there is something bad happening that is changing you.

Thanks to you, I will never forget hearing my mom tell me “I don’t even recognize you anymore.”

Thanks to you, I will never be able to unsee my dad’s heart shattering before me when I told him about everything that happened.

So no, I will not thank my abuser.

I will not thank my ex.

I will not thank my rapist.

I will not thank the person that traumatized me and my family for the next however many years.

I don’t know when I will ever be ok.

What I do know is that I will be.

Eventually.