A Letter to Em

Dear Em,

You were dazzling.

You were fiery in unyielding resolve, radiant with self confidence, and I loved you. Perhaps I loved the way you made me hunger to be better, or perhaps I loved the way you made me feel like I was more. I loved the awestricken and admiring gazes thrown my way whenever I was with you, I loved the attention you showered me with, and I loved the way being with you made me feel. Perhaps those were the reasons why I thought I loved you, and perhaps those were the reasons why I thought you loved me too.

I have always harbored a fascination for all things magnificent, and thinking back, you must have been the dose of splendor I needed to elevate my ordinary into extraordinary. To me, we were the perfect match: you were fire, burning bright and warm, and I loved watching the dance of your flames. Em, do you think moths know that they will die when they approach a flame? I did not know then that your fire would one day burn me, but the scary thing is that even if I had known I probably would not have cared anyway.

Em, do you remember Mel and her over-possessive boyfriend? I was always so full of criticism whenever it came to their relationship. “Why would you continue to put up with such a relationship?” I kept asking her back then. “The decision to stay or step away is yours. You can always just make that choice.”

She never managed to give me a proper answer, and I used to be so frustrated at how she would always just return my concern with a conflicted expression and an uncertain shrug of her shoulders. Her decisions were incomprehensible to me: How does one continue to give in to toxicity even when staring it in the face? I was aghast at how she had lost so much of her personal agency to another, seemingly without a fight, and I believed strongly enough in my own sense of self-preservation that I would never end up in a situation remotely similar to hers. Little did I know then that I was neither as good in recognizing toxicity, nor in resisting it, as I had initially assumed, and now you know that too.

I do not know when we started falling into ruin. I remember how you began with little, vengeful pinches—small but charged, nails digging into skin leaving reddened patches across my arms. Soon enough that became insufficient for you, and I grew to learn the rhythm of fingernails raking across torn skin, once, twice, and then again and again. Even then these did not seem to satiate your tumultuous emotions, growing larger and more uncontrollable by the day; I remember the day you brought a little pocket knife, and the feeling of minute cuts scattered across my fingertips—just small enough to be hidden, and just sharp enough to hurt.

But the starting point could not have been then, because through it all I never once thought that anything you did was wrong. You were my harsh love and necessary evil, my loving disciplinarian, and I defended your actions with a fervor that I no longer possessed for anything else. I did not think anything was wrong when you started seeking me out more and more frequently, until you were waiting for me every day after school. I did not think anything was wrong when I started to decline requests from my family and friends to go out and spend time together, in order to spend more time with you. And I did not think anything was wrong when I started spending more and more time with you, even as spending time with you became less and less enjoyable.

“You should be more like Thea,” you began telling me during that time. Like Mark, Addison, Warren, Flynn, Serena, and all the other countless names you brought up that were never mine; it became a familiar exercise, and yet no matter how familiar I grew with it I could never stop that feeling of shame and guilt from swallowing me up from within. I’m sorry, I wanted to tell you every day, I’m sorry I disappointed you. I’m sorry I’m not enough. I promise I will do better. Except I suppose I was never able to keep my promise, because you continued to bring up the names and I continued to feel sorry to you.

Em, where do the lines blur between “just enough” and “too much”? And if anyone had an answer, would it have been the right answer for me? When you cornered me behind locked doors and told me how worthless and despicable I was, when you reminded me time and again that I had no right to expect happiness—would that have been considered “too much” from an onlooker’s perspective? I did not think it was too much for me. You told me I deserved it, and I trusted every word you said. Indeed, how does one continue to give in to toxicity even when staring it in the face? Before I knew it I had become helpless to your intoxicating influence, and when I finally realized it my agency had already been long lost.

The choice has indeed always been mine. Yet what is a choice other than well-dressed mockery, when you lurk in the shadows of my every thought and decision? In the beginning I chose to stay with you because I thought I loved you. But I watched as your flames raged out of control and burned everything around you down to ashes, a tempest leaving only ruin in your wake. Now you are a fallen star that has lost its light, a worn critic on a one-way road—worlds away from the person I used to admire. Even then I continued to choose you—and why? Why…again?

These days I have been having trouble remembering things, like “my” decisions and why “I” made them. Each day is a murky dream, and I stare into the mirror to see a stranger. But sometimes, all of a sudden, glimpses of striking clarity flash into my mind (can a soul cry for help?), and I wake to realize that a stranger has been in my body.

In those moments, I remember who I was before you took over inside me. I wonder who you are, why you came, and I hasten to make the choices I can while the decision is still fully mine—

One day I looked into the mirror; I saw you and me together both at once and finally I understood.

I used to love you for all the wrong reasons.

This time, let me love you for all the right ones.

With love,

Me