warnings: cussing, mentions of abuse
•
vent writing

~*~

Dear grandmother,

I've worked tirelessly for quite some time now to ensure you never find my Wattpad account, so I hope you'll never see this. If you somehow do, I don't imagine you'll be very pleased with what I'm about to say. That's fine, because I really don't care what you think about me anymore.

I recently went through a handful of things that flipped my life upside down. I was cheated, played, lied to, bullied, ignored, all sorts of fun things. I lost many people and things in my life, and by the end of it, I felt as though I had nothing left. When you have nothing left, there's only two things you can do: you can look back at what you once had, and you can dream of what you might one day have. I spent quite a while thinking about what I had, what I lost. And I realized that I no longer had people to help and support me.

Then, I realized that I did have one horrible thing left: me. And if there was no one else left to support me, to help me with my problems, to distract me from everything that's wrong, then I was just gonna have to take care of myself. So I did. I pulled my a** up off the floor and spent a few months carefully untangling the mess inside my head, getting to the roots of all these threads and organizing them in a way that finally made sense. I took a break from focusing on other people and focused on myself, in a healthy way this time. I ate more, I drank more water, I worked out, I did things I enjoyed doing, I practiced healthy coping methods. Slowly but surely, I sifted through all the broken pieces, and I made peace with myself.

In finally taking good care of myself, I learned something: I am not a monster. I am not the horrible person I once thought I was. I am not the greatest person to ever walk this earth, I never have been, I never will be, I don't even want to be. In truth, I'm not even a good person. But I am not a monster. I have made mistakes, but I made them with reason, I learned from them, I did everything I could to fix them. I am a human being. I deserve to breathe, to drink water, to eat food, to walk, to talk, to exist, and to live. I am not a monster.

And now that I know I'm not a monster, now that I give a s*** about myself, I will no longer tolerate having people in my life who hurt me. I used to. I wasn't happy with it, I would not pretend to be happy with it, but I would suffer through. I believed I was a monster, so I let people treat me like one. But now, I am done.

You can try to defend yourself, try to offend me, try to blame someone, anyone but yourself. Say whatever you want, I don't care. I am not listening to you anymore. I have wasted far too much of my short life listening to you. I have put up with years of your lies, your underhanded insults, your condescending remarks, your bulls***. I have sat back and watched as you abused the few people who can stand to be around you, as you turned what should have been loving childhood memories into living nightmares, but I will no longer put up with it.

You love to play the age card, don't you? Well, have a taste of your own medicine. I am a teenager, and I can make an effort to work through my issues. You are a grown woman, you are a mother, you are a grandmother. If you can't make an effort to work through your issues, if you can't even acknowledge that you have issues, then I'm done. You can talk to me when you've grown the hell up and gotten your s*** together. Then, and only then, will I be willing to try having a relationship with you.

Sincerely,
Your grandchild