I Never Said Sorry

I'm so sorry.

I don't think I've ever actually said that to you.

I've defended you. I've explained you. I've turned everything you survived into evidence of how strong we became, but I don't think I've ever apologized for what becoming strong cost you.

I'm sorry I spent so many years being angry at you for being soft. For trusting people and believing what they said because it never occurred to you that someone could look you in the eyes, know exactly where your heart was, and still be careless with it.

You weren't stupid. You were just still innocent enough to believe that people meant the things they said. I wish I hadn't punished you for that.

I'm sorry I learned to speak to you in the voices of every person who ever made you feel like you weren't enough.

I picked apart your face, your body, your personality.

Every word you said after you said it.

I convinced you that if you could find your flaws before anyone else did, maybe it wouldn't hurt as badly when they pointed them out. It still hurt, I just made sure you heard it from me first.

I'm sorry I taught you to expect abandonment so thoroughly that sometimes leaving first felt safer than finding out whether someone might actually stay.

I'm sorry I made you suspicious of kindness.

I'm sorry I turned your heart into a house with a hundred locks and then wondered why you felt lonely inside it.

You deserved to know what it felt like to be loved without constantly preparing yourself for the moment it stopped.

I'm sorry for every time I told you to get over it when what you needed was for someone to admit that it hurt.

For every time I called you dramatic when you were overwhelmed. For every tear I wiped away angrily because somewhere along the way I decided crying meant we were losing. I'm sorry I made survival your entire personality.

You got so good at carrying things that I kept handing you more. I told you being needed meant being loved.

So you became useful. Dependable. The one who could handle it.The one who made people laugh when everything was falling apart.

The one who would crawl into someone else's darkness with a flashlight even while no one seemed to notice you were sitting in your own. I am so fucking sorry that I let you believe you had to earn your place in people's lives by how much of yourself you were willing to give them.

You never had to be useful to deserve love. You never had to bleed to prove loyalty. You never had to destroy yourself keeping someone else whole. I'm sorry it took me so long to learn that.

I'm sorry for the people I kept letting back through the door because I wanted so badly for the ending to change. I thought forgiveness made us good. I thought loyalty meant staying. I thought walking away meant we hadn't fought hard enough.

I made you fight battles long after there was anything left to save and I called it resilience.

Sometimes it was. Sometimes we were just terrified of admitting that loving someone wasn't enough to make them love us correctly. You knew before I did and I should have listened.

I'm sorry I turned you into someone who could survive almost anything and then forgot to teach you that you were allowed to want more than survival. You were allowed to want softness. You were allowed to want peace.You were allowed to be taken care of sometimes.

You were allowed to put something heavy down without immediately looking around for the next thing that needed carrying. You didn't have to earn rest.

You didn't have to apologize for taking up space and you didn't have to become smaller just to make yourself easier for other people to hold.

I wish I could go back and find you, but not to warn you.

I know that's probably what people expect me to say.

You'd roll your eyes at me and insist you could handle whatever was coming. The heartbreaking thing is you did. All of it. You became exactly the woman you needed when no one else knew how to be her for you.

If I could sit beside you for just five minutes, I think I'd take your face in my hands and tell you something no one managed to convince you of back then.

You do not have to become hard to be strong. Please don't confuse the two. That softness everyone keeps making you regret? Keep some of it, hide it if you need to. Give it only to people who understand what it costs you to hand it over. Because years from now, after everything, that softness will somehow still be there.

You'll still love your people fiercely and want to make someone laugh when they're hurting. You'll still be the person who notices when someone else is standing alone.

The most remarkable thing about you, is that nothing managed to break you.

I'm not going to lie, there will be versions of us that don't survive. You will lose things that you never get back. There will be nights when you don't recognize the woman you've become because she looks too much like armor and not enough like you.

Eventually, you'll start taking it off. You'll learn boundaries without becoming cruel. You'll learn that saying "no" doesn't make you selfish. You'll learn that not everyone deserves unlimited access to you simply because you once loved them.

You'll learn that being guarded can protect your heart, but it can also imprison it. Slowly and stubbornly you will learn to love yourself and it will take years, I'm sorry about that too.

You deserved who I am now much sooner and I let what others did to us get in the way of that. So, forgive me, little one. For every time I abandoned you because I was afraid someone else would, first. For every time I looked in the mirror and hated the person staring back when she was only doing her best to keep us alive.

For all the times I demanded strength from you when what you really needed was tenderness. For making you carry things that were never yours. For believing everyone else's version of you before I learned to trust your own.

Most of all, I'm sorry it took becoming an adult for me to finally understand that you were never the part of me that needed fixing. You were the part worth protecting.

I know you've spent most of your life waiting for someone to come back for you.

I try to be the person we needed, for others. I think you would be proud and it wouldn't feel like it was for nothing. All the pain, suffering and scars didn't go unanswered because we made it here in spite of them. We won.

I'm sorry I am late, but I'm here now. You can put your armor down. I'll take it from here.

Love Always,

The woman we fought so hard to become