An Open Letter

Hey future me, This is two days after the break up Anshuman. Let me get this out of the way first. This is going to come In waves and that was just how life works. But overall it will get better. She is a different person and a fully formed individual, the same way that you are. And what that means is there are ways that our own internal issues will come out and hurt, not just ourselves but often people around us. But the good news is there are so many lessons to be learned from something like this.

One thing I realized was I worried about how I’ve only had three relationships and all of them have felt unhealthy. I know that it’s something where if someone says that all of their exes have been crazy then there is one common factor, and I guess that that’s what my fear is, if I am the common factor. And ultimately if I am the one that is the problem. But I think I’ve realized that the problem that I have is selecting people, and more specifically moving too fast and not filtering people out. I think because of the feeling that I am behind in life socially, and the difficulties with dating, I move too fast and before I even get to read a person I sink my teeth in and hold on, and then the loyalty to a fault becomes a problem. I will continue to hold myself into a relationship that should not have happened in the first place, and I am swept up by fantasy and hope for how things could go. But in reality that is not the case. What is correct is to take more time and get to know someone a little bit better before you decide that this is someone you want to commit in a relationship with. Something I have had to learn in this instance is how easy it is to get swept up with feelings of love and intimacy, and how really intense good feelings can mask our judgment. There was a really good TED talk on how to avoid situations like that, and the solution was to listen to your friends and family on their reads of the person. Assuming that your friends are good judges of character, they can give a much clearer perspective on potential partners, because they are not blinded by love were the same chemicals that you face. You deserve to have our relationship that is good and healthy and desirable not just when the chemicals are flooding through your brain, no matter how good that feels.

Ultimately if you are content being single, and if you are in no rush to get into a relationship, then you are able to selectively choose rather than feeling pressured to take whatever is available. If you were selling a luxury car that was super valuable, and the only people that are willing to buy it would only pay a fraction of the price, does that mean that you should sell it? Or should you wait until an appropriate buyer comes along. You are an incredible person in a lot of different ways, and you are absolutely a wonderful partner for the kind of people that you are looking for. You are kind, you are successful, you are attractive, you are intelligent, you are funny, you are considerate, you are compassionate, and the list goes on. Have a little bit of faith that things will work out. Look at how incredibly strong you have been, and how much you have changed in such a short amount of time. This is only my third break up, and even with it being so incredibly traumatic I am doing the right things. I am not trying away from uncomfortable but necessary discomfort, I am pushing myself to interact with friends and stay engaged, and I am really proud to say that I can come out of this relationship with my head held high. I set a boundary and I respected that, and even though there were plenty of things done to me that are unfair and shitty, I did not retaliate, I was not petty, I did not do anything to try to hurt or upset her or anyone involved. I am so fucking proud of you for the person that you’ve become. Sooner than you could imagine you will feel so much better. Don’t throw away the good memories, and also don’t throw away the bad memories. Understand and acknowledge your own feelings and recognize what things you’ve learned about what you want in a partner and what things you’ve learned you don’t want. There is a pain that comes to growing and you are going to pay that pain no matter what if you want that growth, and this growth is absolutely necessary. But you can handle it. You are the most incredible person I know. I love you.

It's been one day since we broke up. I've had an incredibly crushing pain in my chest pretty much since then and I've spent most of today trying not to cry, or going to my car, or walking and breaking down crying. It hurts really fucking bad even though I know that it's honestly for the best. I cry as much as I can and then I start to feel a little bit better for a little bit until I see something or I hear something that reminds me of her and it hurts all over again. I walked really far from my work in the middle of kind of nowhere and I looked down and I see UCSD health, and it reminds me of her. I remember on one of her dates she started to have a floater in her vision, and for her that’s potentially a sign of her retina detaching and so we left the bookstore and I took her straight to the specialist. I then sat with her for four hours, and I relayed all the information to her mom while trying to keep her anxiety down. Her genetic condition makes her life really fucking difficult. And I remember that I didn’t think about how she went blind how she might not be able to do any of the things she likes to do, or the things we do together, for the things she needs to do for money, but rather I thought about how I could maybe bring back some of the hobbies she has to her. Or how we could find new things together. I thought it would be a really sweet present as a surprise if I got myself tested for the gene that she has so that I can show her that we can have kids without the risk. I thought it was such a pure form of love.

I feel like my chest is crushed, and I can’t think. The grief is so fucking big. I think about the pictures of her, and almost all of my favorites are of her. There were a lot of really nice things. And there were also a lot of really bad things. And I wish it could’ve worked out, but what I mean by that is I wish that there bad things weren’t there. But you cannot pick and choose parts of a person.

I believe that in the future I will have a partner that is emotionally mature and listens to me and makes me feel safe. In the future I will not have to feel like I have to fully explained and archive my emotions as much, because hopefully they will have the knowledge and empathy required to understand a bit more. I think I’ll have a partner who will genuinely make me laugh in clever and smart ways that I get to steal. I’ll have someone who will teach me things also, and that will have meaningful and insightful conversations with me. I won’t feel like I’m being patronizing, and I won’t have to worry about stepping on any insecurities or ego. I will have a partner who values my feelings and interests as much as their own, if not more. I will have someone who is very thoughtful and take the time to truly understand me. I’ll have someone who is considerate to me and kind in minor ways, without asking for recognition. I will have a relationship where conflict could be resolved through effective conversation, both with understanding their own thoughts, but also compassion behind them. I will not feel like I am having a one-sided argument, and I will not feel like I have to regulate someone’s emotions for them.

It’s such a weird thing to have this grief. I both recognize that the relationship was not one that should’ve continued, and it is absolutely a good thing that it ended. I know that no matter what it is going to be incredibly painful to end, even if that is the right decision. But that exists in a part of my mind, that remains un mixed like oil and water. And next to it are all of the beautiful memories. All of the sweet and kind things that she did. And how loved I felt. How much I felt like she tried, and how many times I felt hope.

I think during the relationship I got swept up in a lot of the fantasy of what the future could look like. And I think that’s part of what I’m mourning so much. I don’t know what to do with all of these sweet memories and little things that I didn’t even know I remembered until now. And it’s just a wave after a wave that hits me. It sucks because the highs were so high. She really was a drug to me.

I have a feeling that time will heal this, but it’s terrified because time happens so slowly. And I just wanna know what I can do to stop this feeling because it kills me so much. I feel so horribly sick to my stomach. There were a lot of things that I didn’t like about her, not in the sense that like they were big issues at all but just things that I wasn’t crazy about.

I started writing more things on the list of things I didn’t like, and also fundamental reasons why the relationship would not work out. I feel cruel doing it from being honest, but I need some sort of a way to leave this nostalgia behind. I can always return to the place of the nostalgia, but there will be nothing left. There will not be the illusion that things could just be getting better and this was just a perfect storm, or that this would be the last time these issues happen and then we would be good. Issues just kept happening, and perfect storms just kept happening. At some point there is too much coincidence and I have to acknowledge the fact that past behavior is the best indication of future behavior.

I am absolutely a good partner, and a catch. I don’t think I’m perfect, and I don’t think that I wouldn’t hurt a partner accidentally, but I think that I have shown a consistent commitment to listening and understanding my partner, and I have the tools and the drive to change. I also believe that I am attractive, I am kind, I am genuine, I am funny, I am successful, I am generous, I am very loving, and I think that I am happy with the person that I am. And that person includes the fact that I want to consistently continue to improve as a person, and this relationship has shown me several ways where that is important.

I think a big thing I learned was how easy it is for me to fall into codependency. I absolutely struggled with loneliness when I moved here. And in a way I am grateful for the pain that comes from this entire situation because that both taught me how important it is, while also reminding myself that I absolutely have the tools to find and foster connection. I’m thankful that I have friends around me, and I’m thankful that I know that I will survive this. It’s absolutely going to hurt, but this isn’t just the price of good things. This is serving as a reminder and an incentive for my mind to recognize the hard choices that I needed to make along the way, and the things that I need to look at in myself. Every day will be easier than the last. At least in the amortized sense. I won’t have to worry about fixing the current issue, if me talking with someone else or spending time with someone else leads to their stabilization, if that destabilization leads to her interacting with bad groups of people online, like e daters, or feeling the anxiety and fear of not knowing what she is hiding from me. My sister said something very hopeful, there are actually a lot of good families out there. There will be plenty of kind families that will welcome me with kindness and the same sense of inclusion that E’s family did. There was nothing in E that is unique and unobtainable again. I may not find all of the same things in a partner, but my wants will change too.

If nothing else I’ve learned how easy it is for me to love. I don’t need someone to be my everything, I don’t need them to like all of my hobbies, and share all the same interests. I’m grateful for that experience since it let me learn firsthand both the good and bad things with that. I have faith it will be ok in the end.

I broke up with her. I think she was anyway going to break up with me, but either way I broke up with her first. And it hurts really fucking bad.

I finally realized that I had to set so I’m kind of a boundary or have some concrete thing because otherwise I would never leave and it showed up in the form of her saying that even knowing how much it hurt me, she did not regret that I was recorded without my knowledge. And if she could, she would’ve wanted it to happen the same way again. I know that this is because she is probably hurt by something I said, but I went through the audio for the first time and everything I said I still standby and I do not think I said anything hurtful, so at most it was a miscommunication. They however did say stuff that I did not hear behind my back that was incredibly not OK and the fact that she does not recognize that even fundamentally recording someone in such a vulnerable state without their knowledge gave me enough to finally leave. It hurts a fucking lot, but at least I can have my head held high, because for once I broke up instead of sitting there and begging and hoping that things will change. That being said it’s still fucking hurts so much. So many little things remind me of her, and it hasn’t even been 12 hours. I find myself like at this weird in between of begging and coming to terms with it. I recognize that I need to stand on business here and fully end it. Even if she comes back and she says the right things, I think I need to be strong and begin to move on and heal. I have given her too many chances and she has said the right things before and her actions did not stay consistent with that. There are a lot of things that she has done and I need to recognize the fact that even if people can change, it is a gradual process and it will not happen nearly as fast as would be fair to me. An additionally there has been so many things that she has done that I’ve been incredibly hurtful and fucked up, and I just don’t think that she is currently at the emotional maturity level to be able to make up for those things, and so those Bridges have been burned, and that is it. It still fucking hurts me so much. It hurts that the person I love so much isn’t actually the person they are. I think I’ve gotten high on the fantasy and the hope of who they could be, and I ignored all of the many warning signs and issues. Partially because I haven’t had any relationships before, I think I just told myself that this is normal, and actually healthy. But this is not at all the love that I hoped for. And as much as I want to, I cannot love her into her changing. And I know that there will be plenty of other people out there that would treat me better and be better matches for me. I really wished that she was the one. But I think there’s a lot of different things that I missed because I blinded myself. One thing my sister mentioned was how having such a big intelligence gap in a relationship isn’t super fun, because while it is nice for the moment in the sense of me being able to teach her things and stuff, I would eventually get bored because she doesn’t have things that she can show me in the same way, and it would be a consistent relationship of me teaching her and not really too much the other way around. I think also in terms of maturity there is a big gap there. Also even like practically, she is not good with money and she also does not have any kind of a job lined up and is finishing a useless degree. Even in games she is a low rank, meaning whenever we would play together it would always be having to be me smurfing. I think it’s not that hard to find a partner that is willing to go to the gym with me, and I can even look for explicitly a gym partner if I want that. But I think more than anything else it’s just the emotional maturity. We kept having issues because her struggles with emotional regulation, and I had to walk her through so many different things like how to validate feelings, understanding how certain actions are perceived, or like how to react in certain situations, and there are just so many different issues there where it feels like I have to baby her or teach her simple stuff. There is going to be some partner out there that is smart, funny, successful, kind, open-minded, and most of all closer to me in terms of maturity. And I think it would be a little bit of the best for me to not right now try to search for that. Just focus on being happy again and healing.

I realized the “Letters to E #4” was just a draft on my laptop so there it is now. Out of order but oh well.

I talked with my therapist, and I was able to speak about how I was really struggling with this feeling of conflict from her words and her actions. and I was able to speak about how I was really struggling with this feeling of conflict from her words and her actions. What happened with her roommates was really traumatic for me, right before an important meeting having those people enter my house and physically block me, antagonize me, say incredibly shitty things, and even record me without my knowledge while I’m crying.

I struggle a lot with crying. There was a period of four years during high school where I couldn’t cry once, and at one point I had even written a suicide note and planned to hang myself and still couldn’t cry. I only ended up crying in college once I was out of that house, and still it was really fucking hard for me to do that. Growing up as a kid, whenever I would cry I would be hit by my dad who would yell at me to stop crying, and continued to hit me until I stopped. I learned that it is not safe to cry in front of others, and that became locked into me. I started to feel a little bit safer with E, and I was even able to cry in front of her a few times. That made it feel so much more like a betrayal when she came to my house and broke up with me so aggressively, and then after I had started sobbing she told me how her roommates were downstairs. She then pushed on it even more and they started going around the house with bags and taking her stuff, all while her roommates laughed and made shitty comments. Me crying was met with shitty comments, laughing at me, mocking me, and holy fuck. Writing it down makes me want to cry so badly and I want to just curl up into a ball and hide. I wish it didn’t happen. I wish it didn’t happen so fucking badly. I want to throw up so fucking bad right now. I was supposed to be safe, and I was supposed to be healing and getting more comfortable, and it feels like I was hit so far back into that cage I was trapped in as a kid.

The part that hurts me and causes so much conflict now is how she listened to me, and acknowledged a lot of stuff and validated how I felt. She apologized a lot, and wanted to show that she meant it and it wasn’t just words. But she hasn’t talked to them about how what happened was not ok. Or how it was fucked up the stuff they did, and how that was regardless a shitty thing to do to someone. Instead she made more plans with them, and is hanging out with them.

If someone you knew had a nazi friend, and you were someone directly hurt by that, how would you feel if they continue to interact with them? They don’t say anything or push back on nazi comments, and had even done that stuff with them earlier against you. If they apologize and say they’ve changed, but then continue to hang out with that person while not talking to them about how what happened was wrong, what would you think?

I think this may be a dealbreaker for me in some ways, if she cannot recognize how what happened was not ok, and show that she isn’t that person anymore. That has to come from accountability, and that includes talking to her fucking attack dogs that did those stuff to me. I just don’t feel safe until that if I’m being honest. How am I supposed to believe that I am safe if she’s telling me that she realizes how what happened was fucked up and not ok, but keeps making plans to hang out with them without even talking to them about it.

I know that I need to just wait, and right now my emotions are really high, and it would be healthy if I can take a bit of space and wait a bit. I am strong. I am strong. I am strong. I am strong.

Situation: E broke up with me in such a nuclear way, and it came out of nowhere.

Thoughts: This feels so unfair to me, and this feels like a lack of emotional regulation and super high volatility. I don’t know how I can move past this and not feel like I’m walking on eggshells.

Feelings: I feel like I don’t deserve this, and that it’s unfairly being pinned on me, for her lack of communication. I feel very upset and hurt, and betrayed in a way. I told her that this was what I was afraid of, and she did it.

Behaviors: We either immediately break up, or I suck it up and feel uncomfortable and unsafe emotionally for a while.

Thoughts: She was emotionally volatile, and she doesn’t have the best luck with her childhood either. Emotional regulation is hard for her, and this was a point where there was just too much volatility. She’s just faced with a lot of pain and discomfort, and she didn’t know how to communicate well enough to release that tension, and this happened. She doesn’t want to hurt me, she just doesn’t want to keep hurting.

Feelings: I mean I do love her. And it hurts because I feel wrongly hurt, but also she’s been hurting and we are a team. No need to justify why she is hurting or who’s “fault” that is. I don’t feel like she wants to break up, she wants to just stop feeling this much.

Behaviors: Yes I am within my rights to leave. So is she. But I care about her, and I can empathize with where she is coming from. I also believe that this volatility will go down, and I know that the good times are good with her.

1. I really like how we get to trade roles, and you let me be softer and the little spoon.

2. Massages from you make me feel warm and safe. Same with when you scratch my back, I feel like a cat that just melts.

3. I really love your family, especially your mom. But also I think H is such a good kid and I want to be in his life if I can be.

4. You sometimes make really fucking stupid faces, and I think it’s really cute.

5. You let me vent when I need to, and I know it’s hard and a bit foreign but you let me just rant and say stuff without having to filter it.

6. You make me feel very attractive, and there’s a lot of different ways where I struggle with that so that means a lot to me.

7. I love being able to do this with you.

8. I love how I get to show off to you at the gym, and how you do that little voice and talk about your strong boyfriend.

9. Our double high fives at the gym are something that I think is very iconic and makes me blush thinking about it for some reason.

10. I love how much time you make for me. I know that you have plenty of other things but you still manage to carve out a lot of time to spend with me and I appreciate that a lot.

11. I think you’re a really good designer in the sims, your houses and apartments are really well structured and it’s something I always marvel at.

12. I really appreciate how you apologize and go out of your way to take accountability with things, when you do that I feel very secure with you and emotionally safe.

13. I think you have an incredibly open mind, and that’s really nice because that means that I get to explore and try things with you.

14. I take a lot of pride in your bench press. Not only the weight, but how much you like it. You aren’t like the other girls.

15. I think your humor is a lot like mine, and I love how I can make all different kinds of jokes with you.

16. The fact that we have fights and conflict, but we make up makes me feel secure. I believe that even when things get bad and rough, you still fight to work it out with me.

17. Your glasses were at first a bit jarring to me, but now I wouldn’t want it any other way. You have such beautiful eyes, and I get to see two different types of them because of your massive lenses. I love it so much, and I almost take pride in that (if that’s ok with you)

18. I think you’re incredibly resilient for the shit that you’ve been dealt, and how you keep your chin up and fight for what you have and where you’ve gotten. I know that a lot of things are biologically harder for you, and you don’t even complain but you just grind and make it work. I admire that so much about you.

It's a strange thing but ever since. M pointed it out, I've noticed that E hasn't introduced me to her friends while I have introduced her to mine. I guess I feel a little bit sad by that because it feels like I'm being excluded even though I get that that's the issue and it's not anything that E is doing. It does kind of suck though and I would at least hope that she tries to introduce me to her friends. Even if not a routine thing. It would be nice for me to at least be able to meet them because I guess it kind of feels like they're being hidden away for some reason.

I guess it’s gonna be weird trying to figure out how to not be codependent, I think that’s just something that I am always predisposed to in a relationship if I’m being honest.

We talked and things went better than I could have hoped for.

I didn't actually scream at anything, but more just internally. I talked a little bit with E just now and honestly I'm disappointed with just how the phone call went because she was emotionally numb and also pretty honestly defensive/ aggressive. It did seem like she softened a little bit out when we talked a little bit more but again it feels like I have to carry the emotional burden of regulation. It just doesn't necessarily feel like she has the emotional ability to be not shut down. And honestly it's just really frustrating at the end of the day. It's this feeling of having to almost emotionally parent this situation and I think maybe this is something to keep in mind. I understand it's late but I don't know. It just doesn't necessarily feel like a strong sign of emotional maturity to have this time apart. Instead of trying to fully process things it's more just kind of stewing on what it feels like her frustrations are. I know that there is an intelligence gap in our relationship, this is something that she has said and she acknowledges fully. I guess I just hope it doesn't end up showing itself in emotional situations also. I think there is a big difference in emotional maturity there, in the way that certain actions are perceived, and having that maturity to understand how different situations should be handled properly. I feel like instead of trying to have a productive conversation, it's more of a therapy session almost, in the sense that she needs to be validated. It's not like a thing where she acknowledges that I also have needs and that sense of mutualism. Okay.

We just texted, and I’m not gonna lie I’m a little bit worried because of the tone that she has. She’s using a lot of punctuation and not really being super lighthearted or friendly I guess, but I’m not gonna try to read into it. No matter what happens I know that I’ll be OK. I can hope for the best but at the same time I know that I will be OK even in the worst case.