Letter to you

Dear you, 

I don’t know why things happen the way they do, but I believe that the result is always the same. I believe in fate. If you veer off course, fate will help you back on. It wouldn’t matter what direction you took, eventually, your life would lead you to the destination you needed to be at. Maybe that’s us. Maybe things could have been easier between you and me. But maybe I didn’t want it to be easier. Because every scar that I’ve received on the way to getting here has helped me mold into the person I am today.  

I have heard that if you struggle to sleep at night, someone is thinking of you. Like an anchor, tugging on your soul to keep it in this world, as opposed to losing yourself in purgatory. Isn’t that what a dream state is? Purgatory for your head and the messed-up things inside of it? The place your demons meet with your sanity, and they fight about who will win. Will it be your nightmares or the actuality of peace? I like to think of my life as purgatory, where every day I struggle with both sides. The good, the bad, and the demons I can’t get rid of. For the longest time, I was confused. I couldn’t figure out what you were to me. What could you have been? Now I know. 

You were the striking fallacy to blunt raw truth. You were the love I thought would save me. But I ended up needing saving from you. Fate can be foolish, and fate can be careless. But fate is always true. I was yours to break but you were never mine to love.  

Relationships are a puzzle. It’s a jigsaw puzzle we are all carefully putting together, searching for those pieces that link and connect, that allow us to move on to the next part of the puzzle. Some puzzles remain incomplete, and I think that’s because many people don’t know what makes them truly happy. Maybe they are unwilling to take the time to find those other missing pieces first. They just want to squeeze the last piece into a space it won’t fit. Those other pieces are integral, though. They are the stepping stones for the finished puzzle.  

I am the biggest paradox I know. I am insecure in everything I do, but I love myself to the point of becoming a narcissist. I am warm and endeared one second but indifferent and cold the next. Somedays I could talk your ears out about the universe and others a simple smile is too much effort. But for you, I remained the same. Even when it was hurting me.  

Pain isn't a feeling that hovers until you adapt to it. It tears through your visceral arteries without consent. Death comes later. Pain is just a reminder that it's coming. Loving you was the most painful thing to happen to me. They say you need to learn how to love yourself to love others. But with you, that wasn't the case. I loved you so much that I forgot what hating myself felt like. I was lost and you promised you would show me the way out. It took me a long time to figure out that you were just taking me in circles.  

I used to think there was something wrong with me. Was I raised without love or was I just unlovable? I tried to make myself easier to love. I tried to trick love into staying. I wanted to be your girl in blue. You didn’t want me at all. You were scorching like the sun. The heat tickled your skin. Yet, you pretended that you were safe for me to love, that your hands were gentle, and your touch won't scar me. You still asked me to love you and I did. My life got filled with grief.  

Grief is a world of its own. It feels like fear. I am not afraid, but it feels like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same heavy feeling in the chest. It makes it so confusing. I have always wanted to know, why didn't you make me good enough so that you could've loved me? 

I was always lonely, but the loneliest I felt was when I watched my whole world fall apart and all I could do was stare blankly. You tormented me and I still loved you. It took me a long time to realise that it wasn’t okay. It wasn’t normal. It wasn’t going to change.  

I needed to save myself from you when I spent all my time calling you my hero. I wasn't a human after I left you. But I wasn't one when you were here either. So, is it better to be a monster with a heart or a human without a soul? You tell me, you have been both at the same time. Every time you chose to come home smelling like another.   

You call me out of the blue today to tell me that you can't talk to the love of your life the way you talk to me because you never hurt her the way you hurt me.  

What does it mean? Was I that easy to hurt? Was I just not good enough? You claim I destroyed you when I left you, but what was I supposed to do? 

I don’t know when this story will end but I know it’s not today because today you called me asking me for forgiveness.  

And I don't forgive you. 

Love, 

Butterfly 

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My poetry book ' Fires of Grief: A tale of transformation' is available on Amazon and Flipkart. For a special discount use code PRINCESS50 on the website below.

Fires of Grief