You spent years trying to make me small.
To make me doubt what I saw,
what I knew,
who I was.

Before the violence, there was the addiction.
The slow unraveling.
The way it hollowed you out
until the person I needed
was barely there.
If at all.

After I got sick,
you used my pain to feed your need.
To justify, to take, to abuse.
You turned my disease into your source

And your excuse.

Too often, love became your currency.
And not trusting you, became my survival.

I learned too young
that even suffering could be stolen.

Then came the rage,
the fear that filled every room.
I learned early
that love could hurt.
That safety wasn’t guaranteed.
That silence was the best way.

But I’m not that child anymore.
The one who believed every viscous lie
you whispered and screamed.
The one who thought your anger was truth.

I’m becoming proud of myself now.
For surviving, for unlearning,
for finding peace in the spaces
where your echoes used to live.
I see now that what you called love,
was control, wearing a familiar face.

Still, I hope your soul is changing.
I hope you find your own kind of peace
in the places where pain has lived too long.

I hope that you are praying.

I have forgiven you.
But not for you. 
For me.
There are no more monsters from you left in my heart.
The ones you planted
when I was still a child
have finally gone quiet.

I am no longer afraid of you.
I’ve let you go.
And as I move forward,
I carry no hate.
Only a strange, steady love.

The kind that says,

I love you,
but from a very necessary distance.