I doubt you will ever read this. So this is for me just as much as it is meant for you.

I have always hated myself. My family situation molded me into an insecure little dude. One who went from one trauma into next. You might think it started at 18 with that one experience. It didn’t.

I got molested by a neighborhood boy, who was 18 at the time. I was 7. I thought we were playing a game. Turns out we were not. Nobody knows this. Not even my parents. Pressing on to adolescence. I got bullied, I saw my mom go manic on my dad. Destroying mirrors, saying she was going to divorce him. She did all kinds of weird things. Picking me and my brother up from school for no reason. That’s why I never had a good bond with her, something I think you noticed.

In between my father burnt out. Literally shat his pants due to being overworked. I don’t remember if I told you that though. Either way, I ended up calling our version of 911. First thing they asked me whether or not my dad was an alcoholic. Funny right? Your dad comes crashing in through the front-door gets knocked out, shits his pants and he’s barely able to speak a word. And that’s their first question.

It was only after that that I had my own psychotic break. Which according to western medicine was “genetic”. For years I was treated. I often wonder what that does to people. Who go in with this minor thing and come out believing that something is wrong with them and it will take years to be fix. If it’s even treatable at all.

Only by the end I realized that these people have no idea what they’re doing. I’ve read article after article only to find out this. They can’t even measure which hormones your brain is not producing enough of. They pretend to know all this shit, and how to treat it. When their basic premise is not even measurable. It makes me so sad and angry, yet I can see the silver lining. It’s all a cosmic joke. A joke we take seriously.

The rest I think you know. You supported me when my brother almost died. You supported me when my mother was in the hospital on life support for weeks. I bottled all that sadness up inside. Because that had protected me time and time again.

All of that was what let me to be a clingy guy. Why I wanted yo be sure you would give me a call or respond to my messages. I didn’t want to lose the one person who gave me the love I desperately wanted. To believe I was good enough. To believe in myself. To believe I was not a mistake, put on this planet by happen-stance.

It’s why I didn’t always let you in. Because I wanted to protect you from that side. The side that felt perpetual hurt. I wanted you to be happy and I hated myself for not being able to “just be happy”. It would have required me to break down the walls I had built up over 2 decades. Honestly I don’t think that 2 and a half years is enough to accomplish that.

But girl you sure did swing away at those walls. And I’ll always love you for that. Often I catch myself wishing that we would still be together. Immediately followed by the realization that it would be wrong. Because I never would have gotten the motivation and drive to change myself. Which would have put you in the position of savior. Something no-one should be in.

You meant the world to me and I died a little inside every-time I shut you out. I wanted to protect you from having to under-go or see that side because I know what it looks like and it’s ugly. In the end it just pushed you away, funny how that works right?

If I’d say I wanted to do it all over, knowing what I know now, I’d be lying. Because I know that going through the darkest depths of the human psyche made me kind and forgiving. It gave me the ability to laugh with life.

The love and the cuddles you gave me, fully embracing my demons and subsequently losing that has been the most important thing that happened in my life up until now.

It was what made me realize that what almost all humans have in common is this.

The demons inside are not evil. In fact they’re not even demons. They are the little boy or girl we once were. The one that had dreams and hopes. The one who’s toys got destroyed in order to “grow up”. The one who couldn’t be true to himself or herself.

All they wanted was a hug and be told they were enough. That everything was going to be ok.

So this is for your little girl, my little boy and everyone else’s.

It’s ok and I love you.