Thank you to all the people I’ve let go,

 

It can only be so hard to explain how as soon as you’ve found someone is as quickly as you’ve lost them.

 

6 Years Old

 

Thank you,

to the boy who might’ve not been the teacher’s favorite, but would stand up for me in the basketball court when someone cut me in line for double dutch.

The boy whose teacher didn’t understand that his temper tantrums were because his mother had told him it would be last time she would pass out from her special ‘medicine’ instead of making dinner, again.

 

9 Years Old

 

Thank you,

to my first best friend who felt the need to lie, but knew exactly what to say in order to cheer me up when I was dismal.

The friend whose body ached with such an immense pressure to fit in, that she would sacrifice her own morals for a chance to be heard among a crowd that would swallow her whole.

 

12 Years Old

 

Thank you,

to my father whose alcoholism wrapped like a blanket around his head and heart, but cared so deeply about his children’s happiness and well-being.

My father whose blanket of security was knitted with yearning yarn in disguise of a bottle overflowing with his childhood suffocated him and trapped his last breath.

 

15 Years Old

 

Thank you,

to all the friends I met in the Summer after my Freshman year of high school who parted their own way, but had kept me company in the smoke of firepits and included me in every never ending night of heat and stars.

The friends who I had pushed away and forgotten after being submerged in my own cold pool of a mind that was cleaned with the chlorine branded anxiety.

 

16 Years Old

 

Thank you,

to my first love whose creativity and charisma ran through his veins like electricity, an electricity that drew me in, but also shocked me back out.

The first love and the last lesson that had proved to me that I’m worth so much more than I could’ve ever imagined or realized otherwise.

 

17 Years Old

 

To all the people I’ve let go,

Thank you because you were never free, instead you had left behind understanding, trust, sorrow, anxiety, and love, it still lingers, trapped in a small corner of my mind, allowing me to fully comprehend the same world we all live in.