Thank You - Part 1

Thank you to the 16-year-old girl who cried alone in her room at 2 AM.
Thank you for listening to all of those sad songs until you could sing them word-for-word. Thank you for allowing yourself to feel so low, so dejected and unwanted. Thank you for letting the tears stain your cheeks. Thank you for painting your skin red, leaving a permanent reminder that you had been so overwhelmed and out of control. Thank you for opening your heart to all of the wrong people.
Thank you for hating yourself all of those years ago so that I could love you now.

Thank you to all of the boys who weren't quite men, stuck in the space between childhood and adulthood.
Thank you for all of the plans that had fallen through and the nights I had fallen asleep, phone in hand, waiting to hear from you. Thank you for leaving without any explanation or reason. Thank you for the tears I shed over you, convinced I would never feel for anyone else the way I had for you.
Thank you for not being "the one".
Thank you for helping me become the woman who recognizes that I am allowed to love myself without the validation of someone else.

Thank you to the woman who brought me into this world.
Thank you for always reminding me of the ways in which I never measured up in your eyes. Thank you for promising to protect and love me for as long as you lived and for always falling short. Thank you being being the woman I couldn't come to with a broken heart. Thank you for watching me drown in my own thoughts and never loving me enough to throw me a lifesaver. Thank you for choosing a man over your child. Than you for being the victim and never the aggressor, always the sheep and never the wolf.
Thank you for giving up on me so that I could find the strength to believe in myself in ways that you never did.
Thank you for teaching me that blood isn't always thicker than water.

For You

This is for you.
The one who is afraid they will never be enough.
The one who is afraid they are unworthy of love.
The one who believes that their mistakes will always be what defines them.
Be grateful for the heartbreaks and disappointments.
Learn from them. Grow from them.
You are perfectly imperfect. You were not created to always do the right thing or make the right choice.
You are perfectly imperfect. Priceless.
You have a fighting spirit that has been caged up inside of you for far too long, begging you to let it out.
Release it.

Open Letters: Part 1

To (Some Of) The Boys Who Have Broken My Heart.

(*Names have been changed for the sake of the privacy of the people mentioned.)

Kevin. (The Match)
I was in love with the idea of you.
I was young and drowning in the fantasy that someone loved me and wanted me, despite seeing the ugly parts of me I had convinced myself made me unworthy of being loved. That feeling was short-lived and nothing more than an illusion in the mind of a naive girl.
From the beginning you had unrealistic expectations. You wanted to dictate my life, to give me a set of rules and guidelines to live by that were deemed acceptable in your eyes.
You believed that by smothering someone, by controlling their every move, you could mold them into the image you had inside your mind of what perfection was. Instead, you suffocated me. You made it hard to look in the mirror and see someone worthy of loving.
You taught me that the only opinion that should affect the way I see myself is my own.
I wish I had kind things that I could say about you, but in the end, you left me with no kindness to reflect on. Everything thing you did, everything you said, was done in malice.
You enjoyed being the cat, playing mouse with people you considered yourself better than. While I was able to get away from you, to spare myself from the bite of your claws, you will never be able to get away from yourself.

///

Carter. (The Gasoline)
I thought you would be the easiest person to write about, but in reality, you're the hardest.
There are days when missing you still comes and goes in waves. There are the little moments we shared, the ones that seemed so insignificant at the time, that flood my mind until I'm drowning under the weight of them.
One in particular is when you slow danced with me in the darkness of your room, a slow country song played softly in the background. I was leaving for the summer the next morning, destined to spend the following months a 1,000 miles away from the person who had began to feel like home, You held me against your chest and swayed back and forth, not ready to let go. Not ready to accept the reality that in just a few short hours we would be saying goodbye. You continued to hold me as the songs shuffled, one after another, until silence fell over us. In that moment, I was sure I would never love someone as much as I loved you.
You were the first person I ever let into the parts of myself that I had kept boarded up and locked away. I showed you the darkness and you promised to fill it with light.
Loving you was as easy as breathing, but far too often you left me breathless.
I spent over 365 days gasping for breath, never getting enough to dull the burning ache you left in my lungs.
Thank you for all the times you said the wrong thing.
Thank you for pointing out my flaws and for condemning me for them.
You taught me what should never be acceptable in a relationship. You taught me that sometimes loving someone isn't always enough to stay in a toxic situation.
You destroyed me, but I'm going to be the person to put myself back together again.
I will never give someone the power I had given you over me ever again.
I may not have been good enough or worthy enough for you, but I am and will always be enough for myself.

///

Cal. (The Moth)
While you didn't necessarily break my heart, this letter wouldn't be complete without you.
You were the first disappointment I felt after feeling numb for so, so long.
You were a distraction. A way to forget someone who HAD broken my heart, if only for a little while. You were funny and articulate. You always seemed to know the right things to say to keep me hooked. Talking to you was easy. You thought my sub-par jokes and cheesy comments were amusing. You seemed to value the same things that were important to me.
But, when it came down to it, you were just a chapter in my life. A prologue for the next great adventure. Through broken plans, disappointment, and the first spark of hope after being in the dark for too long, you helped me rediscover my worth. You reminded me that sometimes we lower our standard and expectations to what we believe we deserve.
Thank you for standing me up on that night. For not showing up for our date.
Thank you for saying the things that - while too good to be true - I needed to hear.
Most importantly, thank you for helping me move on. Thank you for igniting something inside of me that I had lost. I will always be grateful for that. For you and the small part you played in a much bigger part of my story.

///

Warsan Shire put it best in the quote; "But sometimes your light attracts moths and your warmth attracts parasites, protect your space and energy,

Some of you - the heart-breakers and past relationships - were nothing more than a moth, darting around the flame of possibility. Intrigued, but cautious. Never getting too close. Some of you, though, were gasoline. You engulfed me in the flames that were only supposed to keep me warm and safe.

I'm going to rise from the ashes, new and reborn.