running back to ruins

dear [name redacted],

you left me. by some twisted fate, you and another person i cared deeply about both left me six months ago, at the exact same time. you left me bleeding from the deep wounds that came from the knives you used to cut me off. i was left to navigate my life alone, dealing with the absences of you and him alone, healing my scars alone. you crumbled me. all at the same time.

months passed. i didn’t speak to you, but you always lingered in the back of my mind. never think for a moment that i didn’t wonder how you were, what you were doing, who you were with. pain was the only adjective that could describe my everyday mood.

but i’m a fighter. fighters refuse to lose, they refuse to be broken down. so i fought my way back to happiness, and i fucking did it. it took time, it took diligence, it took courage. i journeyed through uncharted territory, trying to leave my past behind me and start anew. i was blindly stumbling through the aftermath of destruction, searching for where i belonged. luckily enough, i fell into the right places at the right times with the right people waiting to welcome me with open arms. finally, i was able to overcome the ghosts of my past. you are the ghosts of my past.

at that point, i thought i was done fighting. i thought my waters were finally calm, and that i would be able to set sail peacefully. but we all know life throws us curveballs, and life spun me dizzy when it launched you back into the equation.

you came back with a simple text. at that moment, the floodgates opened and i was left to reminisce on all the nights i spent torturing myself with the mere thought of you. when i thought i had taken five steps forward, i fell six steps back. i ached to move forward, but it’s nearly impossible when your ghosts show up at your doorstep unannounced.

see, life works in a funny way. when you left me, it broke me. but now that you’re back, you expect me to open my arms and welcome you back without a question. when you realize that expectation is only a product of your own sick, twisted delusion, i take comfort in the fact that you finally got a taste of your own medicine. to experience just how absolutely crushed i was just half a year ago. karma’s truly a bitch, isn’t it?

life is too short to not respect yourself. if a person hurts you, or has hurt you in the past, you are not obligated to let them back in. they can apologize, and you can choose to accept that apology, and you can choose to make a judgement on the sincerity of that apology. no matter how long you’ve known them, how much you loved them, no matter who they are to you, without a clear self-recognition of their wrongdoings, you owe them nothing. i am a firm believer of second chances, but there are no second chances when they’re still stuck on their first.

so when you crawled back to me, without even a single “sorry” or spoken apology to acknowledge how you hurt me, without a single word to help me understand why you deserve to be back in my life, my judgement told me to do the right thing for my own happiness. there are no second chances here.

save your energy. you are running back to ruins.

sincerely,

a girl who’s better off now / E.L.