A Letter To The Guy Who Told Me I Wasn’t Good Enough For Him

Dear Well-Wisher,

Hope you’re doing good, wherever you are. Remember me?

You might’ve forgotten about my existence, but I clearly recall who you are. You were the voice of confusion in my head when I looked in the mirror, or looked down while talking to people, and I am writing this to thank you for every time you pulled me down from wherever I thought I stood. There’s beauty in letting your knees hit the floor once in a while, nobody could have taught me that better than you.

You were the billboard of my shortcomings.

You were always there, making sure I trust every doubt and demon I had within me. “I should have” was a phrase that became a constant companion. For all that I did, I always looked at what more I could have done. Please don’t delude yourself into thinking you did me any good, you didn’t. What you did instead, was make my life a perpetual misery of how my existence could compliment yours. It’s a sick mind game, and you’ve mastered it.

Go make yourself your idea of perfect, not me.

See, when you see yourself lacking, and you’re way too lazy to work and improve on that, you begin blaming those around you for not matching up to your standards of what’s ideal. I don’t know if somebody has explained this to you ever, but your standards and ideals are yours, that’s it. YOU have to try to live up to them.

Love has blinded the best of us, and I couldn’t be thankful enough that it blinded me for a while.

In all the times you pulled me down, I began to place you on a pedestal, the person who’d tell me what’s right from wrong, the person I had to appease, the person for whom I will have to adapt a set code of decorum so as to not lose you. I feel sorry at your capacity to see other people as people. I was not a vessel through which you arrange your world exactly like you want it to be. Here’s a reality check dear, nobody is going to do that for you. Nobody owes you that.

But thanks, you know.

Your pulling me down to my rock bottom did me some real good. It forced me to develop the audacity to be whoever the hell I am. It’s given me the courage to be confident with my imperfections. The lingering voice of self-doubt, which was your parting gift, has become a cohort of mine. It’s a strength to know that it no longer pulls me down, and I want to thank you for that. It all stems from you and knowing that makes it easy in a way, to silence these raging storms. Thank you for breaking me, because “it’s through the cracks that the light pours in.”