I’m sorry I treated you like an object. I’m sorry I robbed you of peace and happiness. I won’t give up. I may stumble, but I have no hate in me for the first time in almost a decade. It will be hard some days, but now that I’ve unwrapped my grief and finally identified my true feelings, I feel like I could spend the rest of my life striving to be a saint and never make up for the regret of treating you the way I did. I won’t forget what I did to you and live without guilt. I will never be able to forget the sort of atrocities I commited because I couldn’t face my demons. I just want you to be happy. I’ll be cheering you on from a distance. Be gentle with yourself. You have a right to exist, to be happy, to be free. I’m sorry I tried to control you. That isn’t love. That’s obsession, fear of abandonment, and displacement of responsibility.