It’s easy to write this as i know you will never read it. you have no creative bone in your white privileged body.

after 17 years our relationship was and still is transactional. you needed me to listen. you needed me to advance and move you into a position of power. you needed me to be silenced to make you look strong.

i allowed this of course. i didn’t expect that a woman would be so calculated. especially a woman 10 years my junior. you would teach me over and over and fucking over again that you were smarter and more dedicated than i would ever even imagine to be.

maybe you didn’t know this but i was already knocked down a few times from blood. from people who pretended to be so much more to me than you could ever be. you were always a transparent user. i let you in though. that was my fault. i thought you as a woman was better than that. that as we got older we tried to bring each other along when we insecure or scared.

you taught me that after 17 years i need a change. that i need to leave. that i need to move on. that when i am not near you, you can makeup what i was or wasn’t. i hope your heart feels what you have so freely given to others; cruelness and sarcasm. one day i will not be in your shadow. i will have moved on. either to some place new or to some place you will never know.

i will tell you what i am: fucking resilient, a daughter of immigrants, a survivor of sexual violence, a woman in recovery from depression and anxiety.

i am a runner. a poet. a ride or die for my young teenage nephews. a fucking funny story teller. a curious listener. someone who loves to grow vegetables and flowers in the small backyard with our neighbor. someone who asks what the fuck do you need so you don’t have to suffer an ounce of pain.

i took care of my dying mother when she forgot who i was. i now live for my father so he can live. i am a master’s degree earner in women’s studies. i love my husband who is the only person who saved me from people like you.

you my dear are none of those things. i am proud to be all of them.