Dear Toxic Person,

It is a blessing that you are in the past. This is where you belong, even though it took me three years and a lot of heart ache to see it. Yes, there are many things that I learned from you, like what I do and do not deserve in a relationship, but you damaged me in more ways than one. Thankfully, I've healed over the course of a year, and found real true love, but I have some things to say to you.

I let myself be used because of you. I did things that I would not have done before you, I said yes to many things that I wasn't interested in or ready for. Why? Because I was afraid to lose you. To be alone. I was afraid and that has to be one of the most miserable things in the world to feel, sadness over possibly losing something that isn't even good for you.

I made excuses for you, for why I was involved in such an intensely unhealthy relationship in the first place. "I'm happy, most of the time, I swear. It's just that we argue about some dumb stuff sometimes and...you know."

I made so, so many excuses.

There were quite a few nights that I spent inside in my room, alone, without friends to comfort me because everyone was tired of hearing me cry about you when they knew I would never leave. I weighed the pros and cons of being with you and even though, every single time, the cons outweighed the pros, I still stayed. I stayed and I hoped things would get better.

I sold myself short for you.

There were good times that I would try to hold onto in light of the bad ones. There were inside jokes and drunken stories and funny things that would make me smile. But none of them were worth the pain and manipulation that I tolerated. None of them were worth the loneliness and sadness I felt at the end of the day when I was left with nothing but my thoughts and the overwhelming question: Why am I in this situation and how did I get here?

I romanticized depression and heart ache because of you. I thought that because our "love" hurt me, that it was that much more powerful and beautiful. I made myself so unhappy, probably more so than you did, simply because I lied to myself constantly about the things that I knew were right in front of me.

You did not want to let me go. I think in the end, that is what made me trick myself into thinking that it was true love, because you were so willing to hurt me and threaten to hurt yourself, in order to make me stay. Love doesn't hurt. Love doesn't steal your happiness - it's supposed to add to it.

To this day, I don't know if what we had could have ever been considered love. I don't know if there is a word that could possibly describe the emotions that ran between us. Maybe obsession, maybe infatuation at one point...but overall, I think it ended up being intense hatred and contempt for one another.

We were toxicity at its finest.

I don't know where you are now, or what you're doing. I haven't known for some time. I also do not care about either of these things because I like to pretend that I don't live in a world that you do, as terrible as that sounds. I pray that I never run into you, that you never come find me again. I hope that we can both lead our separate lives, ignorant of one another's.

I pray that no one else ever has to write you an anonymous letter listing the ways in which their lives hurt because of you.

Sincerely,

A Healed Soul.