#you hate

Why can't I love both? <3

I can’t speak for anyone else’s experiences with shitty relationships, but I can definitely speak for my own. So. Here goes.

There was Adam.

I loved Adam, and Adam loved me. We were attached at the hip, terribly codependent - all of our friends slurred our names together like we were one person. And for a while there, we kind of were.

Then Adam hurt me. And hurt me again. And again. And again. And he kept on hurting me until I hurt myself worse.

Three days later, my 51/50 expired. I went home. Burned all his shit. Moved away. Moved on. Not necessarily in that order.

I’ve seen Adam once in the past ten years, at a Christmas party. He asked me if we could be friends. I said no. He took that surprisingly gracefully, and then asked if I could ever forgive him. I told him the truth: I forgave him a long time ago.

God, when I say it like that, it sounds so simple. So easy.

It wasn’t.

I didn’t just wake up one day and think, “Yeah, forgiveness, sure.” No. No, I fixated. I analyzed. I filled diaries with AdamAdamAdam, and Adam’s drunk dad, and Adam’s mom who worked eighty hours a week, and Adam’s past lovers, and Adam’s line art, and how Adam had really good posture, and how Adam would look at me sometimes like I was a fucking gift.

Eventually, I ran out of things to say about Adam. So I started writing about me. My single mom. My writing. How I always stuttered when I introduced myself. How I brushed my teeth over the kitchen sink because I didn’t like looking in the mirror.

At some point, I wrote down something like:

Adam is fucked up. And I’m fucked up. And he fucked me up. And we were fucked up together.

And then - then -

I forgave him.

Not because he asked me to. Not because he deserved it. Not because there was any viable excuse for what he did to me. Not for his sake at all.

For mine.

Because if I didn’t forgive him, I wouldn’t let him go. I’d be, now, exactly as I was when I was nineteen - tied to him, cowering, choking down pills. My name would still be half his.

I don’t hate Adam. I don’t think he’s evil. I don’t wish him ill. Because it’s not that fucking cut and dry. You can love someone who hurt you. You can forgive someone who doesn’t deserve it. My personal inability to despise him doesn’t make me stupid or sick or a fucking apologist.

I’m not any of those things. I’m one thing, and one thing only: the person who survived the only way I knew how. The person who keeps surviving.