Never in my life have I felt like there was so much left unsaid as I do right now.

He doesn’t know that I finally figured it all out. He doesn’t know how much I know it is his fault. Do I still forgive him like I said I did? I’m not sure. If I don’t forgive him yet, I know I want to, for me. If I don’t, I think I eventually will. It doesn’t feel so much like it’s about anger as it does about closure.

I can’t decide what he will say, think, or believe. I can’t decide how he will react or if he will ever change. But I can say for sure what I’m holding onto and where I let it out. So I’m letting it out with yoga and running, self pity and sleep, new goals and new interests, and working my hardest and doing my best. I’m crying and avoiding certain people. I’m preparing myself to figure out what I have to do next. It’s not as stagnant as it feels, yet I can’t get past how these things are still unsaid. Now that a court of law is ruled out as a place to express these thoughts, I’m left alone with them.

So, I need him to know how he broke me. I need him to know it is his fault. I need him to know that whether he’ll admit it or not I know he knows what he was doing and exactly how wrong it was. I know while he was swearing he felt guilty for what we were doing and perpetuating the fear I may be pregnant, in reality he was focusing on his growing list of sexual partners and making sure he could keep them all quiet. I need him to know it’s his fault I lost so many people. I need him to know that like he said, he knew exactly how I thought and he manipulated that to such an extreme that even now I’m still trying to rewire my brain to some semblance of normalcy, not in the sense of who I used to be but simply back to a place that can’t be considered disordered and perhaps delusional.

I need him to know I know he brainwashed me and I’m still learning what is real and what is not, what is rational and what is fear. I need him to know I figured out the difference between what really happened and what he wanted me to believe. I know what happened. I know at least to the degree that I need to know to see he has lied continuously to protect himself in spite of the damage it caused me up to the present day. I need him to know I know enough about what’s normal and reasonable now to say that if his story was true, he didn’t know he raped me, then anyone else would look at the other sexual conquests they’ve attempted or achieved and wonder hauntedly if he had ever done that before, and I know for a fact he hasn’t done that.

I wish I knew why he didn’t wonder what changed between our conversation and me reporting him. I wish I knew how he knew to be so prepared. I want him to know that by trying to fight the punishment of the crime he admitted he committed to my face he proved once and for all that his apologies were nothing but an attempt to pacify me and protect himself.

And I want him to know that I accept that he has won, he has won every single time. He got what he wanted which was to get deep into my brain and abuse me profoundly and get me to keep it to myself and deny it. He won because he broke me like I know he wanted. He won because he’s gotten away with everyone he’s broken. He won because he’s not going to jail and he’s not registering as a sex offender. He won. He cheated the people around him. He cheated the system. He will continue on with what he’s doing, exploiting the hands that help him and finding success.

I want him to know it hurts. I accept it because I have to and because it is all I can do to try to keep healing. I want him to know it will always haunt me. He will always haunt me. He won. I could never fully explain to him how badly scarred he left me because I know he’s incapable of emotion and thus incapable of knowing what it truly means to be in pain.

I want him to know how lucky I am to be here after years of looking straight down off the edge of the cliff and wondering why I shouldn’t jump. I want him to know how sick he has made me, how deeply he has interrupted the course of a life that didn’t need to be this hard. I want him to know that every success I have had in my life since him, and God there have been so many, has been decidedly in spite of him. Because he may have broken me into pieces that will never be fully functional again, but even at half capacity I’ve done so much more than he will ever do while feeling all of these some debilitating and some incredible things he will never feel. I want him to know that when I do win, which I do, though not with him, it means something, and when he wins, it doesn’t. It can’t. He won, and it means nothing.