A Letter From the Woman Who Finally Woke Up

“I love you” doesn’t fix anything.

Empty syllables aren’t the stitch that mends a wound. So why do you keep treating those three words like they’re holy water? Like you can drizzle them over the damage you caused and wait for the miracle of my amnesia?

Haven’t I told you enough times what happened to me; how being used, manipulated, groomed, discarded, and silenced rewired my entire nervous system? Do you have any idea what long-term trauma does to a brain? It makes love feel like a threat. It makes silence feel like abandonment. It makes inconsistency feel like danger.

So no,“I love you” doesn’t assure me of anything. If anything, it stings. Because you say it like it should erase the harm, as if words can magically overwrite the reality of your actions.

You can’t violate my boundaries, chip away at my self-worth, weaponize my insecurities, then come back with I love you like it’s some cosmic reset button.

You don’t respect me.

You don’t even see me.

You’ve judged me, mocked my vulnerability, used the softest pieces of me as ammunition. You told me I was “too emotional,” “too dramatic,” “too sensitive,” all the things abusers have said to survivors since the beginning of time. You dismissed me whenever I dared to say, “I’m hurting.” You shut down when closeness got too real, then blamed me for the distance you created.

And when I mustered the courage to name the wounds, you acted like I was attacking you, because accountability feels like violence to people who don’t want to look in the mirror.

I won’t swallow my tears to protect your comfort.

I won’t contort myself into quiet suffering to preserve your myth of being a “good man.”

Love isn’t belittling. It isn’t dismissive. It doesn’t punish honesty or turn tenderness into a liability. Real love elevates. It welcomes the depth. It meets emotion with presence, not punishment.

Everything I am, my longing for connection, the way I feel the world in technicolor, the intensity of my devotion, those should have been the reasons you loved me. Instead, you treated them like flaws, inconveniences, weapons you could twist when you needed leverage.

You can’t betray my trust, ignore me, feed your ego on the attention of other women, and then claim the crown of “love.” Love isn’t manipulation. Love isn’t neglect. Love doesn’t force me to fight for crumbs while you binge on validation elsewhere.

And when I forgave you… Did you understand what that meant? That was not permission to treat me like a fool. That was not an invitation to use my heart like a doormat. That was an act of courage born from a lifetime of trauma conditioning, where I learned that compassion might keep me safe. That forgiveness was my strength, not your free pass.

It was me showing you the depth of my soul.

And you mistook it for stupidity.

So yes, without accountability, without effort, without reciprocity… “I love you” becomes just another gaslight. Just another thing for you to point to as proof that you “tried,” even though you never actually did.

“I love you” isn’t an apology.

It’s not a shield. It’s not a shortcut to redemption.

Love is effort. Love is presence. Love is steady, deliberate choice.

It’s tending. It’s comforting. It’s protecting. It’s cherishing. It’s showing up again and again, not as a savior, not as a saint, but as someone who wants to do right by another human soul, because you know the value of what you hold. 

So no. You don’t love me.

You love the way I love you. You love the reflection of yourself you see in my loyalty, not the woman holding the mirror.

Did it ever occur to you that I wanted to feel adored, too? That I wanted to feel chosen, safe, held? That I wanted to feel loved with the same devotion I poured over you?

You loved the warmth of my fire,
but you never once asked yourself what it would take to keep that flame lit, as you did everything in your power to try and extinguish it.