The core of our relationship was hard. It was dark and it was painful and it was a literal hell on earth some days.
I remember trying to reach the shore just to breathe right before I was pulled right back under the current of our relationship.
This isn’t regret. This isn’t me saying that I regret staying for as long as I did, or that I wish we had never met because then I wouldn’t have known real pain. I wouldn’t have known what it felt like to have my soul torn apart until all of the light slipped in through the cracks and holes that you so forcefully created.
This is recognition because before I can get better, I have to allow myself to look at what our relationship was. For so long, I didn’t.
Our relationship was one that I would never take back, not in a million years. I learned what it was like to love. And I learned what people meant when they talked about feeling their soul on fire. I felt alive with you.