Written by, Charlie L.
Dear MJ,
I didn’t know it then, but I was looking for you my whole life before we met.
I never knew how to exist in my body.
How to quiet the loud busy streets of my mind,
I never knew how to make any choices, I didn’t know how to feel anything.
I didn’t know who I was at all and the idea of finding out paralyzed me.
And then, you came along,
and you took all those hills and valleys away.
Here was that quiet I was looking for my entire life.
You let me escape the chaos of my family
My deep rooted self hatred seemed to vanish with one smoky kiss.
All the pain, all the misery, all the thoughts, all my unfulfilled wants and needs, they were just gone.
It was only me and you.
You made me believe that I was whole when you were around.
Of course I believed, you got to me when I was a kid, long before I realized I never really had a choice to begin with.
When I was small and vulnerable, I believed you filled every vacant space inside of me.
But that’s not what really happened, was it?
You quietly, so very slowly began a concentrated demolition of my fragile foundation.
I never even noticed the renovations.
Before I knew it my body, my mind, my money, my time, my love, my attention, my soul became a broken down apartment and you the tyrannical landlord I had relinquished all my control to.
You could have me whenever you wanted,
however many times you wanted,
no matter if my throat and lungs were too sore, too sick, too tired, too burnt. It didn’t matter.
That quiet I once enjoyed so much became a silence so sincerely isolating I gladly enjoyed the company of your destructive roommates.
The drinking, the porn, the dangerous sex and driving, the cheating, the lying, every selfish act. I saw them more often than my own reflection.
I thought you loved me.
I thought you saved me.
I thought you gave me inner peace,
I thought you filled the void, but you just chipped away everything inside of me until I became the void.
Like a groomed child, you used me until I was ruined.
Because of you I never learned how to feel, I never learned how to be myself.
You took away every character building challenge, any opportunity to be brave.
You make small
You make me hide
You make me run and seek love from everything and anyone but myself.
But you made a mistake,
and you pushed me too hard this time.
So hard that when I hit rock bottom I felt a pain so real I remembered that I was capable of feeling.
I never imagined that my feelings, the things I ran so fast from, would be what would end up breaking the spell.
So I’m done.
I’m really done this time
The glass is shattered
The illusion is over
The game is done
Only the broken and abused parts of me still crave you, still believe you can change, still cling to the belief that you can be good for me in moderation.
There is never any amount that will ever be enough anymore because of how long you owned me.
You planted a monster inside of me, and I have to learn how to live with it now.
I can starve it and maybe one day it’ll go dormant but the damage is done, and I will never be the same again.
So screw you I’m moving out.
You can keep your shitty apartment, and all its belongings
You never let me keep anything i ever cared about anyway
I hope I never see you again.
And if I do, just know that I know!
It’s not love.
It’s just addiction.
Signing off, finally f*cking free,
Charlie
