Every heartbreak has a story. “Letter to My Ex” invites you into the reflective hearts of people who’ve loved, lost, and grown—offering gentle truths, bold lessons, and encouragement for anyone navigating the aftermath of a relationship. These weekly letters are full of grace and grit, showing how endings shape wisdom and how the past still holds power to teach. From understanding closure to embracing self-love, each piece is a tribute to growth through love, loss, and lived experience.
Malcolm, a businessman, pens this week’s heartfelt Letter to My Ex,
An Open Letter to Leah Atieno:
This letter was never meant to be written. I thought I could bury the weight of your words with time, but silence has teeth—and it has been devouring me for years. To write is to finally un-shoulder what I should never have carried.
Every man has a storm that names him. Mine was you, Leah. My drug and my withdrawal. In your touch, I experienced ecstasy. In your crazy, I drowned in hell. You carved both my joy and my ruin. To love you was to bleed beautifully.
Meeting you at that rugby match in Meru felt divine, like fate itself had conspired to set me ablaze. You weren't just beautiful—you were an experience. A face that drew eyes, a body that commanded rooms, laughter that disarmed crowds, a warmth that drew me in even as you pushed me away—and hidden behind all that beauty and charm—a tongue sharper than a butcher's knife.
I was a man used to control. My life was ordered, my walls intact. But you made those walls feel small. With you, I was alive in ways I had never been, yet miserable in ways I could never have imagined. You were a storm, Leah, and I walked willingly into it.
From keg dens to fine restaurants, rugby matches at Impala to weekend hikes on the slopes of Mount Kenya, you not only taught me to taste life, but also how to swallow poison with a smile. I was a loner, but you turned my solitude into adventure. Even danger became appealing.
I still remember that night, at 2 am, when I almost got mugged on my way to your place because you said you felt lonely. That should have been a sign to turn back. Instead, the adrenaline had been craving more of you. You somehow convinced me absurdity was love, and I called the noose an embrace.
Our love was chaos disguised as passion, and our nights reckless operas of lust and madness—bar brawls, risky games, drunk laughter spilling into public displays where desire turned into spectacle: behind cars, in alleys, in places shame never dared to follow.
There, I lost not only my dignity but my sense of self. You were fire, Leah—bright, hungry, merciless. But fire does not love what it consumes.
Scars carved into my face still tell your story—like graffiti etched on a collapsing wall, proof of the chaos that lived there. Scars not carved by an accident, neither were they birthmarks—but echoes of your chaos and my own damn foolishness.
You cracked the whip, I offered my back, and the scars became the only truth left between us. These wounds are proof that even love, when poisoned, can mark the body as much as it scars the soul. Evidence that passion, unchained, can brand a man for life.
Five years in this storm, and I didn't see it for what it was: an addiction to pain, to madness, to the theatrics. You raised me only to knock me down, and I kept coming back for more. Your words undid me in more ways than fists ever could.
You didn't just call me broke — though you were no richer and only worth a body and a face the world was willing to bankroll - you called me weak, a disgrace, a litany of insults, even turning my parents into weapons.
Every word was a blade, each insult cutting deeper and carving away at my worth. Each one meant to dig beneath my skin and strike the bone. And I let them, holding on to you like the kamikazi pilot you had turned me into. Maybe for validation and self-worth. Maybe because in your arms I felt chosen, even when I was being cut down. That contradiction broke me.
You knew my wounds, and you used them as weapons. Slept with a couple of my so-called friends, and I bent myself into excuses and forgave you. I blamed alcohol, not you. Never blamed you. Even when you offered your best friend Jane as absolution, I took that this was what desire looked like, what being chosen felt like. Twisted, isn't it? That's how far gone I was. Because somewhere in that storm of cruelty, I mistook your sharp tongue for honesty, your venom for love.
You cut me with your tongue, broke me with your betrayals, and left me carrying wounds deeper than the scars across my face. When I finally rid you from my life, the void you left demanded a substitute. I was broken in ways a man shouldn't be. I drowned first in bottles, then in bodies-each sip, each touch, a false refuge that only deepened the ruin. That was the moment I realised: I wasn't surviving you, Leah. I was destroying myself in your shadow.
Leah, you didn't just leave scars. You rewired me. You turned love into suspicion, desire into poison, intimacy into transaction. And I've been carrying that ever since. You taught me a cruel truth: that desire is not always love, and that sometimes the person who makes you feel most wanted is the very one who makes you most disposable.
Still, the real betrayal was my own. I broke my own heart and body by tolerating the mediocrity you brought into my life and called it love.
This letter isn't to win you back. It isn't even for you, really. It's for me—an apology to myself. To heal is to accept what I tolerated, what I loved, and what I allowed. To reclaim the pieces I surrendered in the storm that was you. This is a release. Closure. You were the storm I survived. And the scars on my face are not just fights you instigated—they are reminders and proof that loving without measure is self-destruction dressed as devotion.
Yours truly, the clown who left the circus.
Everyone has a story about love, loss, or heartbreak worth sharing. If you’ve ever wanted to say the things you couldn’t—apologies, closure, gratitude, or truths—to someone from your past, we invite you to write to us. Your real, heartfelt letter might offer healing or understanding to someone else who has been through something similar. You may remain anonymous if you prefer, but your words matter. We don’t pay contributors, but we believe in the power of shared experiences and emotional honesty. Join us in creating a collection of letters that explore love, lessons, and letting go. Be part of this movement.
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