If You Were Still Here | Teen Ink

If You Were Still Here

February 11, 2022
By Anonymous

If you were still here, I don’t know if it would hurt more or less. I know it would hurt in a different way, I just don’t know what that way is. I know I wouldn’t have to deal with your surrender and all the pain that came with it. I would have to hide so much from you. I would live in an ever wavering fear of what could be, what could happen, what would happen. I would be stuck with so much pain and wouldn’t have a proper outlet to deal with what you do.

If you had stayed strong, put up a fight, tried harder, I wouldn’t be writing this. I would have you as a support. I know you didn’t need to surrender; you wanted to. You decided it was your time. I can’t blame you for that but if you had tried harder, maybe I would try harder. Now I have to be my motivation. I don’t have you to do that for me. I guess you were trying to teach me a lesson but instead you gave me a struggle. “Do as I say, not as I do” doesn’t work by the way. I forgive you for giving up but it still hurts. You could have tried harder.

I may be missing you, but I don’t miss the hurt you caused. I know I would have to hide so much from you. You may have been a support, but you also broke me down and took so much. I would have to hide emotions from you, how I truly felt about the sh*t you pulled, your gaslighting, the insults. All of it. I didn’t tell you about what was going on in my life, even the simple stuff that no reasonable person would get mad about, but you would.  I would have to hide experiences from you. I wouldn’t be able to tell you about what I did that day or what I was going to do. I would have to hide reasons from you. All out of fear, out of fear that you would punish me for it. Living in fear isn’t fair and isn’t a good way to live.

You took so much more than you gave and that made me resent you. You took my emotional freedom, my freedom to say what I wanted, my freedom to do what I wanted. You took my freedom. You took experiences away from me. There were so many parties, events, hangouts, whatever, that I missed because you thought taking those away would be a good punishment. I appreciate and cherish what you gave, but the good that you gave is so minor compared to what you took. What you gave doesn’t outweigh what you took.

I eventually would have been able to forgive you if you tried harder. I would have enough of what you gave eventually to outweigh what you took, but you left. You gave up. So I don’t. There is so much that would be different. So much good that would have eventually been. There would have been more bad. But you’re gone now, so I don’t have to worry about that.


The author's comments:

This is a very personal piece in which I processed the loss, and the trauma that came with it, of a family member. 


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TCHANDLER03 said...
on Feb. 25 2022 at 10:58 am
TCHANDLER03, Maryland Heights, Missouri
0 articles 0 photos 1 comment
This is a really insightful look into the the grieving process and dealing with a sudden death. Sometimes its easy to hate those who have hurt us, but once they're gone it simply hurts to not be able to resolve anything. Your writing shows a lot of conflict and pain... so I hope that you're doing okay.