It’s a sucky feeling when you realize you were the toxic one in a relationship, especially when all you did was be yourself.

Maybe you weren’t actually the toxic one, but the consistent overthinking in your brain tries to tell you otherwise. All you want–need–to do is apologize.

I’m sorry.

Maybe I thought we were connecting, but it was really just me trauma dumping while you patiently listened out of simple kindness.

I was chaotic and crazy and not good for you, and I’m sorry.

When I think back to that era of my life, I can’t believe who I was. I wasn’t who you needed me to be because I conjured up a completely different person inside my head.

I think somewhere in the back of my mind, I thought that you could help me love myself, which you did. You made me feel like I was someone special, and I relished in that feeling. However, the ups and downs of my journey were impacting you and our relationship in a negative way; it took me so long to realize this.

I’ve also come to realize that I start being mean to people and saying things like “You don’t actually care about me” as a defense mechanism. I want to get close to people, but I’m scared of getting close because they’ll leave. My healing mind believes it’s best to stay at a distance to keep from liking people and wanting to have them in my life. To avoid heartbreak, I push people away with my words, which inevitably ends in heartbreak.

I got a glimpse of what it was like to have someone who genuinely cares about literally everything one says, and I messed it up completely.

My healing mind did this to us, and I feel like it played a part in stunting your growth. I apologize for the machine inside my head.

I apologize for taking you on a short-lived roller coaster ride without making sure you wanted to get on.

I apologize for any pressure I put on you to open up to me.

I apologize for getting too ahead of myself and envisioning a future where, some way or another, we were in each other’s lives.

I know I shouldn’t apologize so much, but I feel guilty for holding you back for the period of time we knew each other.

Part of me wants to apologize for having hope, but I know it’s not wrong of me to remain optimistic, to continuously see the good in you, and to say nothing but great things about you with the wish that we will get a chance to reintroduce ourselves some day.

Over the past couple of months, as I’ve thought about the damage I’ve done with stunting your personal growth, I’ve realized I also damaged mine in the process. I became a version of myself that was unnecessarily overdramatic, and I am now realizing how toxic and uncomfortable that was.

There’s something about being in your presence that makes me want to set every part of my emotional being free. It’s like your presence gives me permission to laugh as weirdly, uncontrollably loud as I want. I can let the tears come to my eyes without shame. The filter between my brain and mouth disappears. I can be angry and rant and scream and exist as the most independent version of myself, the version I am learning to be without you.

What I saw as freedom, you could’ve seen as overdramatic, disturbing, and uncomfortable.

I’m sorry if I ever made you uncomfortable with my presence.

If I could go back in time, I wouldn’t have tried so hard. I would’ve done a better job at keeping my walls up and preventing you from seeing more than most. I would not know you. Not because I don’t want to or because I think you’re a bad person; even though you have a lot of growing to do, you’re one of the best people I’ve ever met.

I was bad for you, and I wish I could take away the immature toxicity I tainted you with, even if it was a temporary taint. You are an extraordinary individual, and I feel like I failed at making you even better by simply being a good person in your life.

I shouldn’t have relied on you for my source of improvement because it only hurt me, which led to a heartbreaking destruction.

Now, I get overwhelmed with my insecurities–insecurities I didn’t know existed until we parted ways. I am more apologetic than ever before, more cautious of everything I say and do, more emotionally withdrawn.

I feel guilty about stunting your growth; it keeps me up some nights and distracts me from the mundane tasks working thirteen hours daily consists of. My imagination is beginning to run wild, and when I’m not feeling down, all I do is yearn.

I feel guilty, like I held someone back from growing and working towards their fullest potential. I don’t ever want to be responsible for stunting someone’s growth.

Still, I stunted your growth, and I’m working on myself so I don’t do it to anyone else, or you, ever again.