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…

Real love does not punish me for being human.

Real love doesn’t require me to trade my voice for safety.

Once again I feel like I’m just a dumb bitch doing dumb bitch shit. Every word I long to speak gets trapped in my throat. Every dream I chase is merely an illusion, never seen or shared by another. I knew it would go this way. I felt it coming. I’ve abandoned myself for the benefit of another. Truth is, I don’t know how to ask for help. I don’t know how to ask for what I need. I’ve been denied the care, consideration, love and nurturing that seems to be given so effortlessly to others. Yet, I’m the reliable one. I’m the one that everyone turns to….

I wish you would have felt it too.I wish you could have seen in me, all that I saw in you.I wish I would have meant to you all that you meant to me.I wish you would have believed.Believed in love.Believed in peace.Believed in me.Believed in us.I would have made you happy.I would have done anything and everything to learn you, to know you, to heal you, to hold you, to make you a believer in true love.I would have given everything to have you.Now, I have nothing at all.Now, I am empty.Alone.Again.