An Open Letter To You

Dear You,

I didn’t really know what to write when I first set out to talk to you. As adult, we have the ability to recognize when something is over and accept that you can’t change it, right? 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 feel like I was so much happier when we broke up, the relieve feeling that I believe as the right decision we have made. 

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 cheer me up when I'm down, 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. 

“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. 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 before we both have to 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 care enough, or funny enough, or love me 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 sick.

When I say that I want you to be happy, I mean it. Really 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.

You deserve to be with someone who makes you feel good about who you are, who could bring the best of you and support you anytime. 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 want to see you as a happy, and learned how to be happy and full. I want you to learned to express your emotion, to speak out about what you actually feel. When you love her, tell her you love her. When you don't want to lose her, tell her that she's important to your life. When you want her back, tell her that you want her back. Just tell her anything you feel. And don't make her sick of questioning about how do you feel about her.

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. 

And as you may know that I can befriend with all of my ex before you. Even better I can be their bestfriend and never get lost contact with them. So that I might treat you as I treated them. As a real friend.

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 friends and our long trips in the past, 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 meant to be. 

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.

Love,
Me.