Ouch. You hurt. You hurt like when I was small, and I fell out of the big tree I was climbing, and I knocked the breath right out of myself.

I’ll be honest, I was mad. I was mad for longer than you were even thinking of me — mad for longer than you seeing my face on a crowded street would’ve even registered to you.

My heart skipped beats (not the good kind) when I’d hear your name for longer than I’d like to admit.

And honestly? I hated you. I hated seeing you around. I hated you for what I perceived you’d done to me.

You’d lied and hurt me.

You felt like an ocean current, a tide in my brain that kept pulling me back in and slamming me against the sandy floor until my lungs burned with salt. They burned for a long time.

I had let you into the deepest part of me with reckless abandon, with the type of punch-drunk love I know I can never feel again without the fear you installed in my heart when you’d shattered it so simply.

I’ll admit it. For months, I dreamed about you. For months, you’d be in my head when I’d walk down Main Street. It was a record stuck on repeat.

Was that your car? Was that your car? Was that your car?

God, when I’d found out my newest friend was your newest love? When I’d seen pictures of you kissing her forehead?

I felt dizzy.

I felt cheated.

I felt like I lost.

But hey.

You helped me set my standards higher.

You let me know how I should be treated.

You made me dig deep inside of my head and find out more about myself.

You bent me until I snapped, and I only got stronger.

After those months of confusion and pain, I realized how we were both just kids. I realized how terrified you must’ve been to know you had to be the one to pull a trigger and hurt me when you still cared deeply.

I don’t hate you anymore.

Your actions gained me more empathy than I thought I could ever have. You taught me, unknowingly, that time really does heal everything.

So, hey. Thank you.