The last time I write to you by Inez Dumaop

For anyone who has had their space violated.

We need to be the biggest part of our lives. Not them.

The last time I write to you

You might have noticed your absence in my work. You might have read about the joys of my life and found yourself missing in it.

That is because I refuse to spend anymore time on you. Some people create art through pain. And I did. For a while. Until I realized that the only justice I’ll recieve is the one I serve myself. And what justice would I give if I was constantly allowing you onto my pure pages? You and nothing you did deserve to see the light. These pages are ladders out of the hell you cradled me in. Pages meant for words beautifully birthed, pure of your touch. Why would I create something beautiful out of what you did to me? Why, when nothing you did to me was beautiful.

I write to you now as a promise to myself. The last time.

These pages are my place, not yours.

You were a heart breaking black hole, an infection that spread to every corner of my life. And out of the darkness was an open book, pages blank just for me, where stories awaited being told. My story.

This is the space where I get to choose who enters. The only place. My place.

Much of my years meant for youth were spent in anger. Towards you, towards what you took away, towards the world for not crumbling when I did, and carrying on without me as I stayed there. I wished for a day where you felt even a breath of what kind of pain you inflicted onto my life.

But you never will. Because you are not a woman, nor a man for that matter, nor human. You are nothing.

And you are because I make you so.

You will feel only the cold loneliness of being forgotten, the picture of you removed from our mantel, the idea of you finally disappaiting into the earth, burning far down in hell. Your existence but a faint call, a small far away shadow of a memory, a miniscule fleck on the timeline of my life, never entering my pages again.

My name is Inez Dumaop. I am a storyteller and student. I have recently rekindled my love for writing when I took this creative writing class, and I want to keep tending to that fire. I am Filipino American, born in San Jose and raised partially there and partially here in Gilroy. My favorite pastimes include hanging out with my animals, my family and friends, and watching movies.