An Open Letter to Anyone Who's Ever Hurt Me

I am writing this letter to you even though you will never read it. You’ve caused me a lot of pain. In nature, there is no such thing as justice, and I continue to suffer. But today I realized that I must free myself from the heaviness that I feel and that’s what I’m going to do.

I’m suspicious of resentment. It’s not a good friend, and that’s why I don’t want it with me. Resentment makes us feel fear and that is precisely what I need to get rid of. It’s not that I am afraid of you, it’s that I am afraid to relive my suffering and fall into the same mistakes once again.

This is why I have decided that I need to confront it, put myself face to face with you and everything that you represent, whether it’s in my mind or not, and assert myself. If I alleviate this fear, I will be able to alleviate all the other fears that I have.

I loved you and trusted you. I never really asked for anything extraordinary, but if I had known, I wouldn’t have let you hurt me. I will never forget this pain is or how much you have taught me. At the end of the day, I have something to thank you for.

I have learned that you can’t give someone something that they don’t want. You allowed yourself the luxury of making that very clear to me.

I’ve realized that you are harmful to me that you have kept me from making progress for a long time.

Someone once said that true hate is disinterest, and forgetting is the perfect murder. So I’m not going to throw a stone at you; I’m sure that would only add misery, rather than happiness, to my life.

They say it doesn’t hurt to bleed, that it actually feels good. The same happens when the soul is in pain; in some way you are anesthetized and unaware of what is expected of you until it’s too late.

Maybe I’m writing this with tears of blood, with pure pain, but I’m taking control because I’ve made it here with enough time to go even further and overcome what you did to me.

I have to tell you that I’m writing this because behind my courage, there’s a lot of sadness, humiliation, and deception. I feel like I’m walking on top of a volcano while my life hangs by a thread, so I must release the burden that I carry from what you produced within me.

I don’t need much to be okay, but this is why I have to get rid of all this pain that’s inside me. From now on, I won’t harbor resentment, anger, or rage towards you. I don’t want my heart to be weighed down by unnecessary things. Inside every painful experience is a seed of growth and liberation.

The truth is that today I asked myself to do something valuable, so I decided to write this. This letter is not for you, it’s for me, because I need to lift the weight of you off of my shoulders. I stopped to think about how I don’t want anything negative in my life, and I realized that you did what you did, and this is how you make me feel.

I’ve noticed that reflecting on you is the greatest act of self-love I can carry out. Today I can say that I’m doing myself a favor because, now more than ever, I love myself and I know that I don’t want my body to become a tomb for my soul, that I really can face everything that’s inside me. I don’t have to be afraid to live because everything involves relearning how to live.

Images by Marc Little and Larissa Kulik