Dear You,
I no longer search for your face in the crowd. That chapter where I waited, hoped, and believed in promises you never meant to keep ended quietly.
You said you’d always be there, Funny how that always meant except when it mattered. You disappeared so skillfully, so consistently, that I began to wonder if you were ever really there to begin with. You broke my trust which I never handed out easily, never before you and never after you, Maybe the signs weren’t subtle, I just didn’t want to believe them.
Because not believing was easier than loss.
I’ve always lived in a world stitched together from daydreams. But don’t mistake that for weakness. I was never the kind of girl who waited in a tower for a rescue, for the prince who would climb her long hair, which I cut short. Didn’t you hear? I climbed down on my own, you should’ve known that I would do that.
You used to listen to me talk about my dreams, who I wanted to be, what I wanted to create & you told me I wasn’t meant for any of it. That dreams like mine were for someone else. Someone braver. Someone brighter. Someone not me.
It’s strange, isn’t it? The very things you thought made me unworthy & strange were the same things that made me unique, made you fall In love.
You were right about one thing, though. I didn’t deserve you. Not in the way you meant but in the way that matters.
Now? You don’t haunt the corners of my mind anymore, I no longer replay our ending like a scratched record in my head, I’m not the girl in the corner, watching others dance and laugh and sing. I’m one of them now.
Free, Free from the echoes of your doubt, from the shades of your silence, from the way you always managed to paint me blue.
So thank you. Thank you for leaving when you did. For underestimating me. For making me prove you wrong.
None of this, none of who I am now, belongs to you.
Sincerely,
RK