To Every Guy Who Broke My Heart

I could hate you. I could resent you for the way you treated me, and for tricking me into thinking everything between us would work out. I could curse the pet names you called me when we spent all day laying in bed and feeling the warm sun hit our skin from the windows in your bedroom. I could try to scrub you off all the soft, tiny places you used to kiss and tickle me. But instead, I forgive you.

I forgive you for biting off more than you could chew by dating me. I forgive you for making me feel like I was everything that mattered in your life. I forgive you for dangling me along and wrapping me up in the idea of being with you. I forgive you for the way you made me feel after we broke up and making me wish I had never met you. But mostly, I forgive you for breaking off your own fragile price of my heart.

I could go over every conversation we ever had and try to pinpoint the exact moment when you doomed our relationship in your mind. I could pick apart every moment we spent together and debate whether you were actually happy. I could convince myself that you were the only one for me and losing you will leave me alone in this big world forever. But instead, I’ll just move on.

I’ll move onto another relationship with another guy who has just as much ability to break my heart as you did. But I’ll hope that he doesn’t. I’ll move onto a new job that makes me happier than the one I settled with before. I’ll move onto a better life for myself that doesn’t involve dating at all, so I can learn to stand on my own again. And after all of that, I won’t need you anymore.

You taught me more after we broke up than I ever learned about myself when we were happy. You taught me to love myself 10 times more than I love anybody else. You taught me that there’s certain things I can’t settle for. You taught me not to hide parts of myself from the people I love. But most of all, you taught me to forgive the people in my life who have wronged me, even if they don’t deserve my forgiveness at all. You taught me to forgive you.