i'll never forgive myself

...for always forgiving you

I’ll never forgive myself for all the times I stayed when I should have left.

Not because you were kind. Not because you changed. But because I was desperate for something to mean something. I wanted it to work so badly that I kept making excuses for the ways you chipped away at me.

You didn’t even have to ask for forgiveness. I handed it to you like it was nothing. Like I was nothing. I kept letting you back in, not because I believed you’d be different, but because I couldn't bear the emptiness of losing the idea of you. I confused pain with passion. I thought that if I just loved harder, stayed longer, bent further, something would give. That you'd look at me one day and finally see what I was worth.

I bent myself into a hundred versions of "understanding." I buried my anger. I swallowed my pride. I told myself, this is what love looks like—sacrifice. I kept redrawing my boundaries, softer and softer, until they were nothing but suggestions you ignored. I stopped recognizing myself. I became this quiet thing—this pleading, forgiving, waiting thing. And you—God, you never had to change. Why would you? I never made you.

You were careless with me. Dismissive. Cold. And I was so afraid of being alone that I kept making room for your absence.

I don’t hate you. I don’t even blame you anymore. But I hate the way I betrayed myself for you. I hate how much I knew and still stayed. How many nights I cried quietly, wiping my tears, because I didn’t want you to think I was too emotional. Too much. I wasn’t too much. I was barely enough for myself by the time I finished shrinking.

And I still forgave you.

Every time you forgot my worth, I tried to remind you by staying. That’s what hurts most. That I made you more comfortable than I made myself safe.

So no, I’ll never forgive myself. Not for the kindness. Not for the hope. But for the silence. For the erasure. For turning my own body into a home for your apologies, instead of building a home in myself.

But maybe my regret can mean something. Maybe these words can reach someone who’s still in that place—still justifying, still forgiving, still aching quietly behind their smile.

If you’re reading this and you see yourself here, I want you to know:

You don’t have to keep bleeding to prove you love someone.
You don’t have to earn the bare minimum.
You are not hard to love.
You are just loving someone who won’t meet you where you are.

Leave. Or at least, start thinking about it.
Choose yourself, even if your voice shakes.
Because one day, you’ll look back and realize:
Forgiving them wasn’t your biggest mistake.

Forgetting yourself was.