Letters to ex boyfriends, ex friends, and all my ex lovers

Dear Jay, 

Thanksgiving night you were telling me how much you loved me, how thankful you were to have me in your life. The next morning I woke up to text that it wasn’t going to work and had been blocked. That’s the kind of person you are, the kind of person who disappears, who forgets the birthday of the woman he claimed to love, but didn’t forget to text other girls. He always remembered to clean up the broken glass from the mirror he smashed or the parts of the controller he threw. 

You gave it all to her. Life, marriage, the baby, the home, all of it. I’ve spent years trying to prove that I was worth the time wasted, the time lost on you. But you didn’t treat her better, she just gets your next performance. I went through hell and betrayed myself, my needs, my wants, my dreams, all for you. 

I hope your child never has to beg you to remember their birthday. 

I hope your wife never has to clean up glass after you get angry. 

I hope they get what you should’ve given me and more, because I’m not here to beg for closure, or shame you into feeling sorry. I’m here to tell you I survived you, and now I no longer have to deal with you. 

—Grace Sofia 

Dear Nicole, 

We met at 14. A lifetime when you think that we’re about to be 24. It’s been a few months without you, I have started imagining my future without you in it. Without you holding my flowers on my wedding day, and without you being the Tia to my children. This breakup hurt the most, because we weren’t together but never apart. I always saw us growing further into womanhood together, becoming mothers, becoming wives, holding each other through heartbreak and loss, every breakthrough too, all messy and real. 

We’re slowly becoming strangers. I don’t know if you still have that internship, or if you decided to get a masters, or if you got the job you had been looking for. You don’t know the healing I’ve done, the problems and mountains I’ve climbed, nothing. 

I wasn’t trying to control you, to make you be me, I wanted to help you, to save you. Maybe I overstepped and that wasn’t my job. I’m sorry for what I said, I crossed some lines. I shit on them actually. Maybe that was always my problem, the way I go too far before I can fix it. But it came from a place of love, one that had looked past canceled plans, unanswered texts, and missed birthdays. You saw our friendship as something you could press pause on, something you didn’t need to care for, because to you it wasn’t what I thought it was. I saw it as something sacred, and showed up, always. 

I don’t miss you, not like I thought I would. I miss the idea of the friendship we had, the version of me who thought we were close and had an unbreakable bond. Losing the illusion, that I mattered to you the way you mattered to me, was painful but necessary. 

Goodbye, Nicole. 

—Grace Sofia 

Dear Ex-whatever-you-weres, 

None of you were ever really mine. I gave pieces of myself like treasures hoping you’d treat them as such, but instead you tossed them aside for the next shiny rhinestone you found. You taught me how to perform, how to perform intimacy and joy, love and care, how to pretend. 

I thought if I tried hard enough, cared less, did more, went above and beyond the expectations, you’d want something with me that I so desperately craved. To be wanted. 

But I know now not to grieve the pieces of me that are lost in the wind. I know now that I am not the same person who accepted the things you all gave me. I stopped grieving like I lost anything important. I lost the version of myself who needed you. 

—Grace Sofia

Dear Grace, 

I apologize for not teaching you what boundaries look like. I apologize to the girl who begged for people to stay because it felt safer than fighting the battles alone. I’m sorry for all the times I confused chaos with passion, pain with love. 

I forgive you too. 

For giving your heart to people who didn’t deserve it. 

For the spirals and texts you shouldn’t have sent. 

For the rage from being abandoned, and the way you swallowed your hurt to keep others happy. 

You didn’t ruin anything. 

You don’t owe anyone your shame, to prove you’re over it, to win the breakup or fallout. 

No matter what they saw you go through, what they saw you grow through, you are worth keeping around and you always were. 

—Grace Sofia