A letter to my teenage self

A letter to my teenage self

A letter to my teenage self

LTME-postTo my ex,

I want to begin this letter by expressing how much I longed to be loved by such a young age. I was so inflactuated by love that I started dating as young as 6 years old and the minute I hit my teen years I was honestly devoted to people to the point that I could quite happily of stayed with that person till I died.

That’s the sad thing about this is that I spent the whole of my childhood trying to be loved and didn’t once focus on loving myself. You, like a few others before you, took full advantage of that. I am a strong character and very charismatic, but my major weakness was love. You could walk all over me and mentally abuse me, make me feel as if it was MY fault that you snuck and saw girls behind my back, enraged you so much that you would come and collect me from nights out because I was unable to be trusted around drunk guys, being told what I can and cannot wear because it will catch boys eyes. It’s taken 3 and a half years and my now 22-year-old mind to realise that your behavior was unacceptable and that it was not my fault at all.

I will now always blame you for my insecurities because I know for a fact that you contributed to them. For 2 and half years you’d play mind games. One day you’d be in love with me, the next you’d be in a mood and then threaten to cut yourself if I didn’t make up with you. Once you stalked me to my house and sat outside my house ALL night until I came down and spoke to you. It was so embarrassing in front of my parents and completely draining. You took me away from my friends, however you made me look like the bad guy in an argument causing your friends to dislike me and your own mother to be wairy of me. I constantly felt like I was treading on eggshells and that I truly was the crazy one.

One memory I will NEVER forget is at my old best friends 18th birthday party. I was still only 17 and I had to ask your permission to go. You weren’t impressed to say the least as boys were going to be attending. Of course I was going to attend anyway, I’d had enough, you knew that. I was 100% faithful, I always was and you knew I was too. However you liked to make out I would attract the boys and now I know it’s because you had trouble resisting your own boyish urges.
So I messaged you to tell you I was on my way home at around 1am. You bizarrely asked who I was with. I told you. It was the girl whose birthday it was and this other boy who was a mutual friend. You didn’t trust him and you went mad even though I was with another girl and we were innocently walking home. You rang me up threatening to come down there and take him on yourself. The girl went mad at you down the phone. I knew you, I knew you’d never turn up. But you did.

You ran to the other side of town and caught up with us. You were yelling and screaming at me. I was dressed in a dress and some heels and I remember you calling me a slut and that I was a filthy drunk and that you found that extremely unattractive and untrustworthy. I was shocked. I was dressed pretty and was only tipsy and was enjoying my best friends birthday. You began threatening the guy, who retaliated in anger. I tried to stop it but then you pulled out a very large pen knife you’d got from Switzerland waving it in our faces. I couldn’t bloody believe it. You never did anything with it but you were threatening the boy. They both dispersed and left me with you, which looking back wasn’t a particularly safe move. I remembering screaming at you like “WHY THE F DO YOU HAVE THAT!” I remember you saying it was for protection in the case the other guy beat you up which was crazy because you were the one wanting to take him on and what on earth would a knife have to do with that. You shouted at me again and stormed off home, I tried to chase you and you told me to go away before you did something you regret, whatever that meant?!

That was when I walked back to my friends house alone in the middle of night crying. Us three sat up talking shocked and drunk and they told me to leave you once and for all. Of course I was going to leave you, you were unhinged. I contemplated calling my mum and also your mum to tell them. I always remember sitting in my friends living room with mascara all down my face, rocking my phone back and forth in my hands thinking about calling my mum and telling her everything. I was scared in case she generally rang the police and it would all kick off and I didn’t want you in trouble. To this day neither of our mums know and I regret not telling them about that night so much. This is because you rang me a few hours later, bawling your eyes out. You begged me not to leave you and that it was all some massive mistake and you’d change. You kept saying you did it because you loved me so much and it was an act of madness because you were scared of losing me. You sat outside my house doing that weird stalker thing and pestered me for days. I eventually did give in. For some reason I thought that’s what love is and that’s as much as I deserve.

Safe to say my friends were furious and rightly so. I know that’s when my friendship with them ended. So you successfully isolated me further. I’ve never really spoken to either of them since the day this happened. In fact that guy refused to accept my friend requests on facebook for 3 whole years. When he eventually did a few weeks ago I messenged him saying hi. He read it and never replied. It does hurt a bit yeah, because he was my friend and he still doesn’t forgive me after all this time. I want to talk to him about that night as we never got a chance to properly, now I probably never will.

Looking back at my teenage years now, I now know that I was deeply troubled and was sometimes very depressed and misunderstood. I thought this was hormones but looking back I know it was much more than that. It does explain why I was sometimes so rebellious. I didn’t have the greatest start. I never told you this but as I was born essentially dead, everyone was frightened I was brain damaged. I spent my first years in intensive care and in hospital, I had monitoring for whether I was hitting my targets for talking and walking. I ended up living in a not so great area as my parents initially had not a lot of money. I went to local primary school which was quite literally full of troubled children. I remember my bestest friends dad had left and her mum was a raging alcoholic. She was in and out of foster care. She was so clever, much more than me and it makes me sad as she never did lead a good life when she hit her teens. I remember she always had to have special legal permission to go to my house because she was a vulnerable child. All of my friends were from broken homes but one. My other best friends dad had died while he was young and his mum used to spoil him because she couldn’t stand seeing him upset any more. I will never forget when we were playing in his living room and he turned around and told me that he hated his dad and he would never forgive him for dying because he left him on his own. We were 7 years old.
I spent a lot of time at his house and my adopted nannies because my parents had to work so much to afford the morgage and I felt so, so lonely. At show and tell at school I was devastated because I didn’t have any siblings or pets or anything to tell and the old woman who brought me to school everyday was not family but a nanny my mum paid. In year 2, I failed my exams. I had to have a follow up parents evening to discuss it with my mum. She told her in front of me that she didn’t think it was good news and that’s it an indicator of a lifetime of academic issues. I was put down a set. It upset me so, so much. From that day forward I was convinced I was not clever enough and in a way I think that’s what has driven me to do so well academically in the end.

When I went to our school, let’s be honest it was no better. However that was my fault for not going to grammar school despite all the weekends spent at tutoring school. The school was crap it was so run down and old and not enough books or even classrooms for us all. My first months at school was hell as I was put in the wrong class and I made no friends. I cried so much and I wasn’t the priority because my mum was so ill and was in and out of hospital. It was a hard time in my life because I didn’t have my mum to hug me and tell me it was going to be okay and I spent more and more time with a nanny as dad was working more to make ends meet as mum was out of work for nearly a year. It’s strange because she was 5 stone and nearly dead that year and I have completely erased that memory from my mind. I was incredibly close to losing my mum to anorexia. In fact everyone expected her to die. They had no idea what was wrong with her and I always remember mum sat in the living room with me trying to do my homework and she starts continuously throwing up and she was so malutritioned that an ambulance had to be called and she was taken to hospital. I remember going to visit her on Christmas Day in year 7. I didn’t even realise the impact this had on me until I start councelling this year. I never told you or anyone this story.

Now I know the real reason why I went behind everyone’s back and applied for university away from home and the real reason I never went back. The memories at home were too painful, I hated my school and everyone who went there and it literally was the only way to get away from you. I remember screaming this at you in an argument and you were furious. You knew you couldn’t control me once I’d moved. It was painful for my parents and they took it to heart. From that day forward they have never supported my decisions to move and study, even now. That was hard to deal with because not only were you calling me selfish for leaving you behind but my parents were at my ear every 3 seconds saying it was a waste of money. I was going to go to the local run down college and study a foundation degree in public services, live at home and stay going out with you. One day when I was 17, I did just snap. I thought I could do better than Plymouth, than you and than a crappy foundation degree at college. To this day I am SO proud of myself for just leaving and moving 200 miles away against all the odds and successfully obtaining a honours degree.

Throughout the first year of university you still were trying to control me. Everyone knows me as a party girl, but often it was not worth the argument with you and I’d stay at home. As time went on I began to grow independently and loved my freedom. I began lying to you and telling you I was going to bed and then going out with my housemate and promising her not to put anything on facebook. Once or twice you came to visit and you were rude to all my house. They disliked you. You said uni was just full of layabouts and everyone just wanted to sleep with each other. You did not support my education at all and like my parents made a point to telling me that doing the subject I loved was a waste of time.

When it got towards the end of my first year at university, in April I’d had enough of you. I had the strength to finish with you. However as per usual you wanted to control me and make me feel bad and I took you back. You used this to play a game. It was Easter and I was coming home to see you. You’d clearly planned this for a while. It was the final day of Easter and I was heading back to uni. You were gushing about how we were going to be together forever and I believed you. My dad went up to my room and told me it was time to go. He drove us in his van to the train station and he stayed in the car while you walked me onto the platform. I was very sad as I hated being a long distance relationship. You cuddled me on the platform and then told me that you had been rethinking our relationship and that you didn’t think it was going to work. I couldn’t believe it!!! You were just telling me were were going to last forever. The train was about to leave so I stepped onto the train and you said to me, I’m sorry Emma but it’s over, I can’t do this any more. The train left the station and I bawled my eyes out on the train on my own. You heartless git, how could you do that to someone when they had no way to defend themselves or have a hug off anyone!!! I am furious to this day about that. That was 100% planned and was the cruelest thing someone has ever done to me. You got a lift back in my dads van talking normally as if you hadn’t just broken his daughters heart. When I told my dad later he was furious too. Only a complete psychopath could be that cold and deciving.

I was determined to sort it out. I am a person who cannot move on without closure and I accepted it was over however I wanted to talk in person first and set the record straight seeing as we had been out for nearly 3 years. I had work before Easter and I worked a few 12 hour shifts at the racecourse. I happened to get paid the day after all this happened so I said whether he liked it or not I was catching the next train home to sort it. I woke up and walked to the station and bought a return home on the day costing over £100 which was ALL my wages gone. As I sat on the train I rang you. After a few tries you eventually answered and I told you I was on the train. You went nuts calling me a f’ing idiot and a b***h and if I got to his house you would just not come home so I can sit outside all night. You then said I’m going to block your number and I never want to talk to you ever again followed by pathetic name calling. You blocked me and there was no way of contacting you. That was the last time I ever spoke to you again.

I got off at Bristol parkway and changed trains and went back again. One of my housemates picked me up as I was in tears and had just kissed goodbye all my hard earned cash. That was the closure I needed because I HATED you. I still do hate you. My parents drove up the next weekend and took me out for dinner and had a chat with me about how adult life is hard and I will be happy again one day. It was the loveliest thing they ever did, it meant a lot.

Now here comes the good part. I met a truly wonderful person. So wonderful that without him I would never have come to the realization that everything I have gone through was undeserved and I am who I am because of those experiences. I spent so long in denial and to have such a fresh outlook on life because of him was such an eye opener. He made me realize that good people actually exist which amazed me. I even nearly passed him by because I thought he was too good to be true. He is the COMPLETE opposite of you. He is kind and considerate and patient and so trustworthy. With him what you see is that you get, no catches. I spent my whole life looking for someone like him and ended up with someone like you. I want to thank you with all my heart for blocking me in April. If you never let me go I never would have met him. All my family and friends adore him and not only am I convinced that we will be together forever, but so are the people around me.

However, I do not like the person I have grown to become. Someone very impatient, abrupt and angry. I never want the past to excuse my behavior sometimes but I do know that my behavior is heavily affected by it. This year more than ever I know who I am and what I want and what I need to do to be a better person.

Did you know I moved on again, gained a masters degree and then moved abroad with this long term boyfriend? Meanwhile what have you achieved exactly? There is no better feeling that doing what others thought you could not do.

I know in the very unlikely event that you come across this, you will know this is about you and you will also know deep down that all of this is true. I hope you are envious of my success. They say forgiving your ex sets you free, but in this case it does not. Forgiving myself set me free. I will always hate you. I will always know who you really are, I will always know what you did that night and after all I know all your deepest darkest secrets. I pity you.

I wrote this letter to get a LOT of feelings off my chest and make sense of them all. This year has not been easy and I realise all of this contributes to it. Thank you for pushing me over the edge so much that I was forced to move away and start again and to meet a person that I truly did deserve. I never would have left without this and my life as it is right now would not be here.

Proost to the future,
Your ex.

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