A love letter to my broken heart.

Maybe it doesn’t feel this way now, as you survive each day on haunted memories invading your dreams, a numb emptiness lingering from the ghost of your lover’s touch, but you made the right choice to leave the person you never wanted to live without.  

You wondered when you chose to dive head first into this intense love affair, if at some point you would have to leave. You felt your love was deep, sacrificial, and ethereal, and you hoped it would last. Though, nothing this intense or all consuming had the ability to survive the monotony of regular life.

It broke you open, exposed the deep scars of past childhood trauma, and asked you to look deeply into the wounding of your own soul. 

You were a mirror to teach a lesson of sharing, pain, truth, and finally of letting go. But, you didn’t want a lesson. You wanted love. And this felt like a kind of love that could only be written or sung about, explosive like Cassiopeia. This love lived within stolen moments of passion, deep emotional bonding, and adventures of travel to places you both tried to make your own, and pretended were your reality. Mere explanations defied the intense feelings and the addictive connection. 

Intermittent reinforcement was the basis for the repeated cycle of highs and lows. The shock from repeated broken promises, lies, gaslighting, triangulation, and manipulation, drove you to a depth of pain, difficult to convey to anyone on the outside. You made space for your lover to seek refuge from their pain, longing for peace and acceptance that was conditionally given. 

Your lover learned how to push every button and reveled in the response their actions elicited within you. Your feelings and experiences were subtly created and controlled. As a result, you shut out friends and those who cared for you as a condition of your loyalty, not realizing your efforts were not based on healthy connection. You became someone you didn’t like, so you would be safe and loved. 

You tried so hard with what you were given— to make it work. You empathized until you were empty from the compassion required. Every story presented to you revealed a new level of understanding of the person you were loving. Each time your lover returned from cycles of abandonment, you were a little more broken, and always determined not to give up. You would not fail. You wanted to be the soft place your lover could land, from the stress of the constant demands others placed on them.

You believed your love would be enough to heal both of you. 

And yet it wasn’t.

Your own soul broke a little more each time, to give what was required. 

You discovered you were not the only one that felt a special responsibility for your lover’s emotional wounding and care. The big lies were difficult to accept and resulted in years of arguments, bargaining, break-ups, a break down in trust and friendships, and many broken hearts.

The effort placed on emphasizing the little lies helped you realize that everything was a lie.

Staying trapped in a painful cycle with a toxic lover was never the plan for your life path.

Toxic relationships are born out of deceit and manipulation. Love can not exist on a foundation of lies. The toxicity extended to all who came into orbit. The roots were rotten at the core. 

Maybe there is a hole now that may never be filled. Maybe you are not sure you will ever love again or feel the same ecstasy and joy you once lived for each day, with the person you felt was the love of your life. Weekly therapy and survival mode is your life now, while you wonder if you are too broken to ever trust anyone, or yourself, ever again. 

You are facing your own choices and the hurt you caused to those who loved and cared for you deeply, to prioritize a person and relationship that was never healthy.

You are discovering the loved ones who devotedly cared for you, stayed by your side, holding space and love. They waited for you to break out of the mind f*ck. They knew you would wake up one day. They serve as your support system while you learn how to stand on solid ground, building new roots. You are loved and deserve to be loved. 

You are showing your children that being strong doesn’t always mean hanging on, sometimes it means letting go and walking away. It means knowing when something, or someone, isn’t good for you, that all the love in the world can not fix that. Your strength is not found in stubbornly holding onto what hurts you and others, but your strength exists in looking at yourself in the mirror, and realizing what the cost is to you, and to those who love you. 

If you feel weak and broken while you walk away, that is true strength.

Having compassion for the person you love, does not mean staying and trying to fix them while they keep hurting you. It means loving them, and yourself, enough to walk the f*ck away, so you can heal. It is having compassion to break your own heart one final time, when the cost of your broken soul was the price to pay for the relationship to endure. 

I know it doesn’t feel like it right now, while the pain is a big giant hole in your soul, but you did the right thing to leave. 

You are accepting the role of the villain in someone else’s story, to be free of the hurt you inflicted on each other, as you realize every word of this could be written by the lover you had to leave. 

~