I’m sorry, but I must leave you now. We’ve been through so much together, seen so much. I’ve come to know you intimately as you’ve repeatedly come into my life coupled with the words “I love you”.

Hurt has become home somewhere along the way and I don’t know what it might be like to live without you. Yes, it hurts to hurt, but it also hurts not to. You are a familiar comfort, even as you attempt to prod my soul to seek better things.

So I must say goodbye. Because even as your pain reminds me I’m alive, I realize that leaving you is a wild adventure, full of the unknown. And I don’t care. I’m finally letting go.

I must say goodbye. Because the years in your shade are over and I’m ready to turn my face to the sun. As I wander into this wilderness, I trust that I will find respite from your constant chill.

I must say goodbye. I’m falling in love with a life free from you, a life without you in it. I’m giving up on you. For so long, you’ve been my security, walking in each time another walked out. But I can no longer live with you whispering that it is better to break my own heart than to risk the idea of possibly falling apart.

I’m saying goodbye because I deserve to love myself better, to understand myself more. It’s time for me to fight my demons, to choose myself and create a new, brave heart. I will lead me into battle against the army of my insecurities and I will fight until the walls of self-doubt crumble.

Farewell my beautiful home of hurt. You have served me well for a time, but I am choosing to start anew, with more of me… and far less of you.