Remembering 19-year-old me, I saw no traces of a scheming witch, just a scared kid navigating one of life’s hardest conversations without a script in a world that kept insisting she was lucky, that nobody strikes gold twice, that good girls don’t dare ask for more when they’ve already been handed plenty.
I saw a gun-shy girl, an overabundance of caution, a brittle conscience that didn’t break sooner because some lines don’t appear until after you’ve crossed them. A person who, in waiting to be absolutely sure before causing irreparable harm, wasn’t being malicious — and anyway, when is the right moment to crush a perfectly good heart? What box on the calendar is best for bulldozing a dream, leveling a good person who has shown you nothing but kindness?
Falling out of love wasn’t premeditated. I didn’t yet know how much I didn’t know about what love could and should hold until it started seeping through cracks I had spent months pretending not to see (and had been told weren’t there). For better or worse, I didn’t tell my ex-boyfriend there was already someone else when we broke up, because my decision was made regardless and leaving that part out was the best way I could think of to limit the damage.
I spent most of my adult life believing one bad thing made me, in part, a bad person. I anchored myself to a single loathed fact — that I had hurt someone — while never acknowledging the courage it took at that age (or any age) to reach, with no guarantee, for something bigger than a series of checks down a list and the absence of mistreatment. To have an unbearable conversation too late instead of never, but nonetheless before a ring, a candlelit reception, two mortgages or a custody hearing.
Walking away when my attempts to speak went unheard, refusing to stay in a version of myself that no longer existed for the sole purpose of making another person happy — I understand now that these are not things bad, broken people do.
If it should ever come to it, they are what I would want my daughter to do.
All these years later, by the light of the phone in my lap, I forgave myself. Grown-up me, though far from proud, finally made peace with what I had done.
