#apologiesineversent

[apologies-i-never-sent]

K

I don’t have words. I just have an I’m sorry for you. There is so much I would have wanted to say in the past but I respect you so much, so so much. I’m sorry. I just want you to know that I still think of you and I send you nothing but love and healing. That is the only thing I have in my heart for you, I promise.

[apologies-i-never-sent]

G

I recounted my life to my therapist in vivid detail. It was not vivid for her but I relived every moment, every image came flooding back like I was back in the shoes of younger me. In these images I was anxious, lonely, scared, ashamed, embarrassed, sick, sad. In those shoes, I was impressionable, vulnerable, naive, unaware. With every word that spilled out of me like a synopsis of my own sick autobiography there were rivers of pain that I couldn’t swim in. I told her about my crushes, abuse, relationships, friendships (rather lack there of). I spoke of desperation, distress, hopelessness. But I told the story like it wasn’t mine. I tried those shoes on, felt the pain, and took them off. I became detached. It was unbearable back then and today it was insufferable. I felt so sad for that girl, in middle school she walked in circles around the campus for hours just to avoid being seen alone while all the other kids shared in laughter and friendship. Friendship she didn’t have and couldn’t get. I felt pity for the high school girl that was so desperate for love that any attention felt like a drop of water in a barren land. Gosh the thought of it now feels like a punch to the gut. The thoughts move quickly through the networks in my brain trying to find a way to escape. But I’m here. And I made it. And I’m safe. I need to continue this road. I need to understand my past self. I need to understand. I need to understand. I need to.

[apologies-i-never-sent]

L

I did some more healing and with every step of healing it seems to lead back to my terrible life experiences with you. Honestly, I was unaware (until yesterday) that you didn’t even like me. Like as a person, you know. You, like a lot of guys around me at the time, liked me for what I offered. Not physically but what I did for them emotionally. I was a boost to morale. I was so desperate to be loved and cared for that I made my life revolve around the person I was with. For years it was you. For years you occupied that pedestal with your name engraved in it and man did you enjoy it. Who wouldn’t? A mediocre (at best) man being held on a pedestal like a god and being treated like one. I remember one time you told me you felt sick so you couldn’t see me (news flash, you weren’t, you were just a gross person) so at the tender age of 16 I got on my bike and rode 2 miles to get your favorite meal then rode 4 miles back to your house to drop it off and went 2 miles back to my house where I worried about you. I’m so sad for young me. I deserved so much better, I was a catch. Seriously, when I talk about those scars that tighten every time I take a deep breath I really do mean it. As soon as I think I’m safe I get transported back to those times in my life where you had suffocating grasp around my neck. You always made it so I ended up broken and shattered. I remember one of the last times I ever dealt with you, you sent your best friend to tell me you were no longer interested. Mind you, this was after YOU actively pursued me for months. Well at that point I was so numb and broken I really didn’t have more in me to give. I remember looking at your friend and saying “okay?” You had once again tried to humiliate me but jokes on you cause at that point I was on the literal brink of death. My depression was so deep I considered ending everything every hour so you were not very high on the list of priorities anymore. Wait a min… I just realized that’s probably why you were no longer interested. I didn’t have a pedestal anymore, not for you or anyone else. My life was a minefield of pain and suffering. No longer was it dedicated to you. And this is why I write these entries. Not only do I get to shout into the void about that pain you caused me but I also have realizations about my experiences. I’m so glad I stayed. I had the strength to push past my trauma, some of which you are directly responsible for, and I have someone in my life who loves me for who I am. He kisses the scars you made and holds them while I try to trust and breathe again. For 10 years he’s done this. He has a golden statue where your broken pedestal once stood and the beautiful thing about gold is not only how beautiful it is to look at but how strong and valuable it is to those who know it’s worth.

[apologies-i-never-sent]

Z

listen… I had a dream the other night and I am one that believes in the spirit realm. I believe our consciousness can meet in this dream land. I truly believe we met there and talked about things or rather attempted to talked. You ran the whole time I tried to apologize and in the end I realized, much like I did in my last post to you, that me apologizing is not about trying to make you feel better it’s about try to find peace for myself. What a down right selfish thing to do. The guilt of my actions wrap right around my body like cord to bind me with sadness and this is just a reminder of what I did to you. This guilt and shame keeps me from doing something like that to someone else. I would never even THINK of doing that to someone else again and that’s partly due to the consequences my actions had. Listen, you were not without fault. You did some real fucked up shit too but your cuts were nothing compared to mine. I cut deep and I probably left scars that still sit on your heart and if they do I’m still very sorry and I’ll regret my actions forever. I really hope those scars don’t follow you anymore and I hope that all you carry with you is peace. What a twisted reality to sit in when I think about you. Sometimes I’m mad because I feel like my actions were a reaction to hurt that you had caused but the adult version of me knows that intent doesn’t negate impact and although my intentions were not to hurt it doesn’t mean that I didn’t. I hope the universe can also forgive me and that Hecate can help me heal cause this burden is one that still burns my soul and sends me down a spiral of self hatred. I wish I could get a sign that you’re okay cause that dream still had no closure. Ugh this is still a mess.

[apologies-i-never-sent]

Letters I’ve never sent?

Yes, this is how this all started, letters I never planned to send. What this has become for me is nothing I imagined. This has become a journey of self discovery and speaking into the universe feelings I kept down and hidden for so long. In speaking these feeling or rather writing this feelings, I have realized a lot of things. One of the most important ones is how I idealized versions of people in my mind to protect THEM and to maybe secretly also protect myself from the reality of situations. Throughout this I have realized that yes I have been hurt but I have also hurt and I’ve also learned that I’ve been hurt and disguised it as “protection” from others. Namely men. I have another letter to write but for now this is all that I have to say about this subject.

[apologies-i-never-sent]

D

I did it. I finally did it and I told you to leave me alone. Your response…. Your response is something that I didn’t expect but then again it was another way of trying to keep “conversation” going. Get fucking help. See a fucking therapist (not me) and move forward. I want to make 1 thing real fucking clear… I didn’t answer what you said about my marriage so that it didn’t become a conversation but my marriage is STRONG. Very strong. We have been through crazy shit and almost 10 years later we’re still growing together and growing stronger so no your messages did not cause issues in my marriage because my husband has seen every single one and he knows what you did. So truly I hope this is the end of it. Really.

[apologies-i-never-sent]

K

Oof I never thought you would get a letter but here we are. Your memory came up as I thought of all the crappy things I’ve been through… you were not the worse by far but that does not mean you were good. I don’t think of you often but when I do, I wonder why I felt so bad through our our relationship. We had good times but why do I feel like things were not good and then I remember… I remember how every time I visited you, your parents couldn’t find out. How you would go as far as to put me in closets so your parents wouldn’t know I was there. This sounds like we were kids but we were in our 20’s at this point. Again, I really wonder if there are things I just blocked out because I walked away from our relationship so broken. So broken that it took me a year before I started seeing my now husband and even longer before the idea of having children crossed my mind again. Our relationship left me so shattered that I stopped wanting to have a relationship and stopped wanting children. I stopped believing I could love and be loved. I hope you’re doing okay and if you are with someone that you are not shoving them into closets. Alexa, play I forgot that you existed by Taylor Swift

[apologies-i-never-sent]

D

I went into my spam messages today and saw you had once again tried to contact me. You have for years tried to contact me and I’m not sure why…. We were friends but we were never friends like that? Like we weren’t best friends who had a falling out because of some drama. You literally put your hands on me. About 2 years ago you finally apologized but what was ASSAULT you called “inappropriate interactions”. Like what? I’m glad you finally came “to terms with it” the inappropriate interactions that is… gross. Those “inappropriate interactions” left me scarred for years. I still bear the scars of that day. I told you I forgave you and that I’ve moved on. I hoped that it would make you stop contacting me. It did the opposite. You still reach out. Til this day you reach out. Please. I don’t care to soothe your guilt conscience. I don’t care to hear about how you’re planning to have kids with your wife (who you were with when you did what you did). I don’t care to hear about how you’re putting down you last down payment for your first home. This does not humanize you to me, on some level it’s worse because you think that appealing to my “mom side” is going to get you back in my good graces. WHY do you want to talk to me anyways? I have nothing to say to you except leave me alone. Are you drunk when you send these messages? It doesn’t matter. I’m finally going to put an end to this once and for all and let you know to leave me alone. I was being polite but politeness isn’t working anymore. As Green Day so famously wrote: “Good Riddance”

[apologies-i-never-sent]

M

I had a dream last night. One where we joked and connected again and we talked everything out. It’s weird because when I think about our friendship now after doing some self reflection and healing I know that if you hadn’t been interested in me we probably wouldn’t have been as close as we were. It hurts for 2 reasons. 1. You didn’t really like me as a friend you just wanted to be with me and 2. Because when it didn’t work out I felt abandoned by someone who was supposed to be my best friend. It seemed like after you broke up with me you still blamed me for the end of the relationship. It was taking me some time to adjust to the shift in the relationship and I was honestly a broken person, by that point I had been emotionally abused, physically assaulted, and used by guys. You didn’t know ALL that so I don’t hold that against you BUT you knew some. I had told you because you were by best friend. I don’t know. I don’t know what to think. I go back and forth but it’s hard to know 100% because I can’t talk to you about it. I so badly want to just TALK and get it out of the way, let you know that I’m a better version of me. That I’m healing and that I’m not that girl I used to be, not the traumatized parts at least. But I can’t do that. I can’t make that decision for you and I can’t manipulate you into doing that.

So for now I keep having this conversation in my mind. Solo. I continue to heal and hope that I won’t need that conversation. Or we will just keep meeting in my dreams and talking about it there. What a messed up place to be in.

[apologies-i-never-sent]

G

I had a dream my dad died. And not just died but got murdered.

My relationship with my dad has been a complicated one… I carried a lot of resentment for the first part of my life and the resentment was a result of feeling rejected by my father. I have since then healed and tried to reach out to him but I guess it takes 2 to make a relationship work no matter how healed one party is. I feel bad for him because he MUST be living with a lot of hurt, I mean, how can you not have a relationship with your child and be okay? Even though I have reached out and he still doesn’t answer I no longer feel “rejected” or like “I’m not good enough” to be cared about. Sometimes I think about reaching out just one more time like this will be the time he’ll respond but then I wonder if I want to enter a toxic relationship like that again. I can’t write him a letter because there has been a breaking of trust there for me and I worry about sharing my vulnerability in that way. Even in this nameless, faceless blog dripping in anonymity it feels wrong to be vulnerable in that way. It’s a place I feel like I’ve healed but I’m too tired to revisit. Will this eventually bite me in the butt though?

In the dream I kept thinking how I had just been thinking of reaching out to him and how I should have done it but no matter how much I wanted to cry I couldn’t. The sadness was there but I couldn’t let it out? Like a part of me felt emotionally congested to where that part of the hurt could not be accessed. My brothers all could cry and be upset but I couldn’t.

He’s older so when he does pass will I regret not reaching out? If he’s gone from one day to the next just like he was in my dream will I be okay with never having the choice to talk to him again. I don’t know. I feel like I’ve made peace as of now but maybe I haven’t. What a weird dream to have. Oh and the people that killed him came back to kill me when I went to his funeral which made it even weirder. I mourn that part of me that would have loved to have a good dad in my life. I had “father figures” in my life but that’s not the same. These “father figures” also made me believe my worth depended on my actions. Love is earned and not deserved. What a load of shit.

My mom did the best she could too but it was another case of love being earned and not deserved.

I guess I just wish I had one healthy parent or caregiver in my life.

Wow wtf. Maybe I’m not as healed as thought? Time to go get some more therapy I guess 😂

[apologies-i-never-sent]

I thought of you today

And I really missed you, not in the way you miss a romantic partner cause I have one of those and he’s just the most amazing person, but in the way you miss a best friend. That effortless connection, the effortless banter, the way you know each other so well that there’s no guessing what the other person is thinking. I went to the concert of the band whose CD we listened to OBSESSIVELY together. The band whose lead singer put out a solo album and then we listened to THAT obsessively. Deep down I know that I hold you in a light where you did nothing wrong but we know that’s not the case. Now that the naivety of my teen years has started to lift I can see that maybe the reason why we were so close was because you had feelings for me. If you hadn’t liked me as more than a friend would you have still stood by my side and cared for me in a way that a best friend would. As soon as everything blew up you kinda disappeared… is that the result of you moving on because you knew I could only offer you friendship? Did you distance yourself because you were hurt? Was it a combination of both? I have so many unanswered questions that I think I have the answers to but I don’t want to think that way. I want you to stay untainted in my mind. I want to cotton candy memory of us to stay intact. I want the sweet candy encased spot where I hold you to stay undisturbed.

I want us to stay us in my mind and for it not to be under a dark cloud because I think it would destroy me. I wish we could talk just one more time, a neutral space in time where neither of us get hurt and both of us get closure. Gosh if I could only get 10 minutes but I know 10 mins doesn’t suffice to explain everything, to clear up everything, to tell you everything. I don’t even think you would want those 10 mins.

So for now, you stay in my pocketful of sunshine. Maybe for now, maybe always, maybe forever.

[apologies-i-never-sent]

G

My heart is heavy tonight. Not the kind of heavy that sends you into a spiral but the kind that makes your heart break. The weight on my chest makes it hard to breathe but it’s a phantom sadness that is only remnants of the real sadness that once sat there. It’s like a phantom limb pain that you can’t get rid of because it’s not really there. There is a knot in my throat that feels like anxiety but there is no fear or worry in me. This is the kind of pain that can only be described as the ghosts of depression past. Does my brain not believe I’m “enough” yet? Do past burdens creep up just to remind me I’m alive? Is it a warning for what’s to come and why can’t I just let myself be happy without being haunted by the feelings of anguish that come back from years ago? I just don’t want to human today. Today is hard.

[apologies-i-never-sent]

J

This is never a letter I thought I’d write, I never thought I deserved to speak to you or about you because who do I think I am? Clearly there are closer people to you that were and are hurting still and here I am, a nobody who knew you for a short few years. Down the hallways of that school you laughed and smiled without a care in the world. During our conversations you said some *questionable* things that I laugh at today when I think about them. We grew close for a very very short time and I got to understand and learn some of your inner workings. After the fallout I didn’t think of you much except in the context of hurt. Hurt mostly driven by the fact that I had lost another friend and that I was not believed. I think that hurt the most, the fact that I told the truth and was not believed but I swear it was no ill feelings towards either of you. Fast forward, a day 10 years ago I get a call as soon as my plane landed in Miami. It was my best friend. He said you were gone. It took me a minute to realize who he was talking about because he called you by your nickname. The name of a certain celebrity so I was like “the celebrity died?” I even turned to my grandma and I’m sure the look in my face was pure confusion. Then like coolant running through my veins it set in.

You were gone.

For a while we did not know what happened then someone told my best friend and he shared the news with me. Just like that initial coolant, ice ran through my entire body when I heard what happened. I had just gone through the same thing except, you completed. I didn’t.

I felt guilt for many reasons. 1. Why did I deserve to be here if someone like you couldn’t make it. 2. If what happened didn’t happen, would we still be in touch and could we have talked about this. 3. If it’s really that bad, I should be gone too. Now, I know all of these are unrealistic and not logical. I know that. But in my own constant battle with death I just wanted to come up with anything that I could have done differently.

Your funeral came and went and I fell part every time I thought about it. Again, the guilt ate me inside because who the fuck did I think I was mourning so much when other people who were closer to you were more affected. How SELFISH of me, how STUPID of me, how SHAMEFUL of me. I’m sorry to all of them and I’m sorry to you because truth is I don’t know why it was so hard for me. I don’t know if it triggered my own recent experience but I know it couldn’t have been anything else that it might have looked like on the outside. I was faced with my own mortality and that was so scary for me. 10 years later I still secretly mourn you and think about you all the time. I have the fondest memories of friendship with our little group. I hope you are dancing to Soulja Boy in the beyond and that you’re happy.

[apologies-i-never-sent]

A

I don’t really know how to start this letter because I’m not sure where my feelings are about you. We were friends for a short period of time but the friendship felt so intense that when it “ended” (well use ended but it mostly fizzled) I was left hurt and confused. You were the kind of friend that I now realize is toxic. You were nice when you wanted to be, super supportive, and all about “yes let’s uplift women” until you weren’t. You said words that hurt but were delivered in a cloud of cotton candy that made it feel like it was a compliment. Your eyes could express disgust transmitted in waves of kindness and having your back. I remember the day you told me I would never be front and center because I wasn’t charismatic enough. Oh and the day I tried a skirt on over my dress and you gave me a panicked look because the zipper wouldn’t close over layers of clothing I had on. OH WAIT remember the time you took a “girls trip” to my HOME and then left to go get ice cream with all the other ladies and no one thought to invite me.

I guess when I really start to think about our “friendship” I think I was just lumped into a friend group that you happened to be a part of. In our group chats you vented about your in laws, your job, your friends and when I wanted to feel supported and asked for help in the group chat you all of a sudden sent a blanket statement about how the chat had just become too toxic and you weren’t having fun anymore. Woo. What a run on sentence but that’s how I felt in our friendship, suffocated. Like I was constantly running out of breath that I could never catch. I should have known by the way you spoke about other women that you were the enemy disguised as a feminist. I should have known by the hand around my throat that were your covert insults that you weren’t a friend. Not even someone whose energy I wanted to share in. Now I see why those ladies stepped away from you. This whole time I have felt like I did something wrong, like I messed up my only chance at friendship with women.

Today I surround myself by powerful women, strong women, KIND women. Women who don’t make me feel like I’m too much, women who uplift me like I uplift them. Women who love me like I love them. It wasn’t me. It was you. I’m not sure what became of your story but I hope you have closed the mean girl chapter and have learned kindness. You need it and so does the rest of the world.

[apologies-i-never-sent]

H

For years we played a cat and mouse game… I don’t know why I ended up falling into that game with you and to be honest I don’t remember how it happened either. All I remember is that back and forth and what I would consider the feeling of a major “eye-roll” personified at the end. I wanted it to work, for a while it felt like it was a case of star crossed lovers where something was always in the way but it turns out you were in the way. Every time I tried to move on with my life and be happy you would pop up and try to become the center of my universe. You knew exactly what to say, when to say it, and how to say it in a way that would make me slip back into your trap…. theeeeen 2 weeks would go by and you would pick some sort of fight, start seeing someone else then disappear for about as long as it took for me to start moving on.

This happened on and on and on for years. And I remember one of the last times this happened, the time I decided I would move on and do it for good. You texted me, I was surprised because it had been a while. I guess I was not following the pattern you were used to. I said we should be friends because I had nothing against you I was just getting whiplash from the back and forth that was us. And you made the ultimate manipulative move…. You said “I love you”… you had never done that before, you had never SAID that before. For years I wanted to hear that and you used it as a last resort. Every part of me in that moment LIT UP like a 90’s Christmas tree in a Lifetime movie, for about 5.3 seconds. Then just as quick as my body lit up it felt sick, a rock felt like it was making home in my stomach and I felt like the air had been taken out of my lungs. That feeling was the realization that this was then end. I replied “no, you don’t”… I actually remember chucking when I sent the message.

It’s been so long and I have the image of these texts burned into my mind. I once again said it would be best if we were just friends. You responded in shock as if I was crazy for questioning your feelings, you insisted your feelings were real and tried to convince me of it. Looking back now, maybe your feelings were real? Maybe you had finally made a decision about the back and forth and decided you did want to be together? But I had made a decision too…. I didn’t want to do it anymore. I had been broken down and disillusioned by us so many times I was just tired. Our conversation ended there because you just stopped responding in a state of indignation… who was I to question YOU?! Well. I didn’t fall into that trapped either and I moved on anyways. Then… you came out of the blue again. This time I had healed enough (from you that is, I was still a mess) that I was ready for the conversation that was going to happen. You messaged me at 1 am to hang out. You and I, and the reader of this letter, know what that means. There is no hanging out at 1 am, there is one reason as to why people see each other at this time. So I said no, I said I was not your last resort and I was not going to see you. Again, you tried to make me believe that it was not like that and that you had just been hanging out at your aunt’s house with no charger and could not talk to me. Okay. Massive eye roll at that point. So we never spoke or saw each other after that. I guess in writing this I realize that there was no friendship like I originally thought, just a version of us where you used me to your benefit. You didn’t want me but you also hated the idea of me being happy with someone else. Can’t have your cake and eat it too, in your manipulative nature and your good looking exterior I guess it happened for a while but I guess the veil fell for me and I saw you for who you truly were. A con man.

I hope you’ve grown up. No hard feelings here, I’ve healed from whatever we were or weren’t. As with the others, hope you’re having the life the universe feels you deserve.

[apologies-i-never-sent]

C

I miss you so much. We shared so much time together and you were such a big part of my life. You were my voice of reason during the time where I didn’t have one and if I did it was very quiet. You tried to protect me from a lot of things and I am grateful for that. At the time I was not ready for that and I was not ready to hear the truths you were telling me. I withdrew and I moved towards other friends who obviously didn’t care about me the way you did. Every year towards our birthdays I remember you and all the fond memories we shared. From grad night to senior luau. All those memories I hold so dear and near to my heart. Sometimes I want to reach out to say hello. To check in on how you’re doing. Our friendship didn’t end on bad terms we just became distant and our lives took us down different paths. Maybe one day I’ll have the courage to say Happy Birthday and check in to see how you are doing and how your family is doing. Miss you so much, Chiquita ❤️