Abusive ex wants my forgivness

So five years ago, I finally got the courage to leave my abusive ex. It wasn’t easy and resulted from him threatening to kill me and loved ones if I left, and ended in quite a few calls to the police from him showing up at my house. When I finally got out, it was like life opened up to me, I finished college, got a stable job and bought my dream car. I joined an amazing church who is so supportive, I met my now fiancé who is a wonderful man and we are planning our life together and building our dream house. I’m so thankful and blessed that I was able to get out of that awful and dangerous situation, I wouldn’t have been able to have anything I have now if it wasn’t for God pulling me out of that and giving me the strength to fight back.

Anyways that was years ago, because I completely cut all contact with him, the last thing he remembers me saying to him was basically me begging him not to hurt myself or my family, that’s the last picture of me he has in his mind. He reached out yesterday and wrote me an email about how he’s wondering how I’m doing, wondering if I have the same hobbies, he wrote down his phone number because “it would be very interesting to converse after so long” is how he put it.

Reading that email honestly almost put

Me into a panic attack because I have so many bad memories and fear associated with him. But also, I would not talk to an ex regardless of how the relationship was because I have an amazing fiancé and I wouldn’t even entertain talking to an ex. But even if I was single, I wouldn’t want to “converse” because it’s like a slap in the face that he thinks he can just message me and ask me how I’ve been and expect me to respond well. It’s like if an arch enemy who tried to kill you and then comes back later and wants to have small talk, like really dude? He also said in the email that he is trying to be a better person and move on in his life and he really just wanted to hear that I forgive him after everything he did. He said he doesn’t feel like he can move on in life until he knows that I forgive him. Which is confusing to me because why did he message me? For small talk, to wonder how I was doing? Or to ask for forgiveness? It’s kinda fishy to me.

This sounds like bull crap right? Has anyone ever delt with an ex like this? I do feel like I can forgive him, but I don’t feel like he has a right to ask me for forgiveness and I don’t feel like I have an obligation to tell him he’s forgiven for him to move on, apart of me wants to be genuine and say I forgive you but leave me the heck alone, the other part of me wants to say a lot of bad words to him. I honestly just want him to leave me the heck alone forever.