Dear You,
I didn’t really know what to write when I first set out to talk to
you. It seems dramatic and self-indulgent to want to say things so long
after the fact — I should have just been an adult and gotten over it,
right? I mean, isn’t that what marks the transition from petulant child
to wise, well-balanced adult: the ability to recognize when something is
over and accept that you can’t change it? As with many things in my
life, I guess I sometimes walk around with the frayed strings of what we
broke off — words I didn’t say, ways in which I hurt you, things that
I’ve changed that I wish you could see.
I wish you could see me now. I know it sounds silly, but I
wish you could look at the progress I’ve made in my life and the adult
that I’m becoming. I feel like I was so much younger when we broke up,
even though it wasn’t that long ago. When I look back at the words I
allowed myself to say to you, and the mistakes that I thought were more
than okay to be making, I feel overwhelmed with embarrassment and
regret. How could I have let you — someone who knew me well enough to
love me, to rub my scalp when I was sick and kiss me while walking home
from the subway — see me in such an immature, hurtful state? I just want
to go back and wipe those ugly moments from your memory. I want you to
see me only as I should have been treating you, with compassion and
respect. Though I know I am not that person anymore, that the anger and
frustration and desire to lash out have drained from my body like some
kind of open wound, you aren’t aware. You must still be walking around
thinking you broke up with a crazy person, someone unable to show any
emotion when cornered other than spite. I want to say I’m sorry.
“Sorry” is a hard word to say, though, and not really because you
don’t want to admit you’re wrong. It just often feels… insufficient. It
feels like I’m trying to make excuses for something, or that I’m being
trite and trying to scoot everything under the rug with an overused word
— I’m not. I am sorry. I am sorry that I allowed myself to
drag the end of our relationship out so much farther than it should have
gone. There are only so many fights, so many words we don’t really mean
hurled at each other from across a bedroom or the dashboard of a car
before we both have to look in the mirror and say, “Okay, this isn’t
working.” I should have done that much sooner than I did, and maybe you
should have, too, but I’m not here to blame you.
And I know that’s hard to believe, because I spent so much time
blaming you for things. You weren’t strong enough, or funny enough, or
smart enough. You didn’t do things the way I thought you should
do them, and therefore you deserved to hear about it. Since then,
though, I’ve figured out that running around in circles trying to change
people isn’t going to help anyone, and that the only person I can
actually change is myself. I want you to understand that I don’t hate
you, I hated the person that you were with me. But I also hated the
person I was with you. We were like this awful poison coursing through
each other’s veins; I was addicted to the feeling of being mad at
someone, of fighting and makeup sex, of being righteously indignant and
having a bone to pick. I was sick.
When I say that I want you to be happy, I mean it. We’re used to
thinking that no one can just move on from a lost love and genuinely
want the other person to find happiness somewhere else in life, but I
do. It’s taken a while, but I’ve finally realized that we were simply
not right for each other — and that no amount of fighting and then
tearfully telling each other how much we loved each other was going to
erase those fundamental differences. You deserve to be with someone who
makes you feel good about who you are, with whom you can be utterly
yourself and not worry that your mere existence is going to step on
their toes. When it’s right, it’s right, and after spending so long
trying to fit a jagged piece into the puzzle with me, you should be able
to just feel the ease of a good match.
I do think about you sometimes, though. I think about what you’re
doing, who you’ve become without me, what parts of your personality have
risen to the top or almost faded away now that I am no longer a daily
influence on your life. I guess it’s kind of selfish to center so many
of my questions about you around our relationship, but you have to
understand that I only knew you in one context — and I want to know you
outside of it. I want to see you as a happy, untethered adult who has
gotten out of the toxic partnership we had together and learned how to
be happy and full. I am no longer tricking myself into thinking that we
should have made it work (or that it was even a possibility), and the
mourning period of your loss has passed. It’s more now a quiet sadness
about the love that has disappeared from my life. We knew each other so
well, and meant so much to each other, and now we don’t speak at all.
It’s as though all of those moments we lived together have just
evaporated behind us, and that seems such a shame. I don’t want you
back, but I want to be able to talk to you — does that make me weird?
Maybe if you’re free one day, we could get a cup of coffee. We could
sit and talk about all of the funny things that happened with your old
roommate and our long trips in that old car, and the things we used to
talk about doing but never ended up getting to. It would be nice to feel
that all of that love wasn’t meant to just be destroyed by the window
of ugliness we experienced towards the end. There were still good things
to take out of our love, so much that I learned. I hope you learned,
too. I hope that you can look back and see things about us that make you
smile, that remind you how much fun it could be, even if we weren’t
soulmates. I hope you understand that I will always care for you, in the
way one might a distant friend you’ve lost touch with but still long to
laugh with every so often. And I hope you’re well. I hope you’re living
life the way you wanted to, and have gained enough perspective to know,
as I know, that something doesn’t have to last forever to have value.
*
(like something half written to me by him and half written to him by me)
