An Open Letter

It’s day nine after the break up. And today fucking hurt like hell, I emailed her the Minecraft world and told her that I had unfriended her little brother which was the last two loose ends. And she responded thank you with a period and so it’s over. It hurts a lot because I loved her, and a part of me still does. But at the same time I’ve grown and I’ve learned that the relationship was not good for me. It was a constant cycle of scraps of love and hope, and then she would do something bad or hurtful and that would make me feel unsafe and betrayed, and then after I would apologize even though I shouldn’t have, then she would apologize and then give me hope and the love again for a couple days. And that is very addicting to the brain, and I recognize that because I’m having withdrawals. I so desperately wanted to talk with her because it feels like I’m due for my next hit, where she’s going to be kind and she’s going to be loving and sweet, but it’s done and I need to remind myself that.

I think I want to remind myself is that she absolutely loved me, but I don’t think to me I was loved enough. I think if it had been a more proper love, she wouldn’t have done things out of anger that hurt me or broke my trust or betrayed me, and she wouldn’t have consistently crossed boundaries and continued to hurt me very deeply without making any kind of a change. And I’m not saying that she’s a bad person, I think she’s someone who has a lot of growing to do, and also was dealt a bad hand. But at the end of the day those things are her responsibility and not mine. I deserve a relationship where it is reciprocated, my love, the effort that I put in, and the care that I put into my partner’s well-being. I don’t deserve to be in a relationship where the other person is OK with hurting me, consistently and as a pattern. I know that she didn’t mean to manipulate me either, but she consistently did in several different ways and even if it’s out of ignorance, it still is manipulation. And all of the crying and guilt that she felt I appreciate, because it shows that she did not take pride in her actions, but at the same time tears are not enough, and she just continued to hurt me and break my trust over and over again. And so I know that she is not the one for me. And I think it’s a really strange thing for someone who might’ve grown up with love, to understand that this is not something to accept, and that things can be so much better. But to me, I was neglected as a kid and so I didn’t get to experience what love felt like, and so when I get these small scraps to someone else it might feel like being mistreated, but to me this is more than I’ve ever felt before. And it sucks because that made me so much more susceptible to love bombing, and sweet promises. It’s so incredibly cruel and convincing when someone is so starred for this love to tell them consistently how much you matter, and also how you want to be with them in all of these intense different ways. But those things were not true, and I think she also got swept up in this fantasy. I’m again saying all these things not because I blame her, but because it did happen to me and I want to acknowledge that. And I didn’t deserve a lot of the stuff that happened, I didn’t do bad things back, I didn’t retaliate, I didn’t mistreat her, and there were mistakes that I made like going too fast or not setting boundaries earlier, but these were not things that hurt her, but rather were things that should’ve protected me. I think I fall into a trap thinking about if she is hurting or what she is doing, or if she’s going to move on, or if she’s thinking about me, and all these things do not matter. They are ways of keeping me trapped in the past, and that was a lesson that I’ve learned from and it was a person that I got to spend a lot of good memories with. But that person is gone and so is the person that was in that relationship from my sign. I’m right now driving on a route back from the airport that I remember because after almost a month apart I took her back the same path. And I remember how good it felt to finally hear her voice not over a microphone or a speaker, and to feel her legs in my hands. And I also thought a lot about how she was my baby, and how I thought those names were cringe until I got it with her. And I really wanted to protect her and keep her safe, because I really felt like a caretaker to her. I also need to remind myself that there are going to be people out there that would not treat me or do the same things that she did, there will be people out there that will love me without having the additional baggage of emotional work left undone, like self sabotage, or insecurities, or lack of independence. There will be people that have gone through experiences in life, and have properly grown from them the same way that I hoped to. There will be people that will challenge me, that will pridefully show me off and want me to meet their friends, there will be people that will be so incredibly happy and lucky to have me in their lives, and I will feel the same way towards them. There will be people that will actively make me laugh, not just reiterate my jokes or give me opportunities to make myself laugh. There will be people that enjoy learning as much as I do and growth, and I can be competitive with and actually be competitive with. I won’t have to permanently handicap myself around them to make things fair, and the other person won’t feel patronized. I won’t have to worry about someone else’s ego and constantly censor the things that I do. I won’t have to worry about when I’m not with them, because there will be people out there that do not give me reasons to worry especially so early on. There will be people out there that will apologize without me having to beg for it. That was a big thing, I remembered how much I had to beg for certain things. Like I had to ask her to tell me that she didn’t forget about it and that she is sorry. Or that she could try to do something without me having to handhold her or walk her through it to show that she cares. And on top of it she would actually do the things that I would ask her to do. I wouldn’t have to worry about someone who just felt like they did not have the mental capacity to recognize what things needed to be done without instruction. I would want a partner that gets me a thoughtful Christmas gift and a birthday present and something sweet that feels like they understand me or that they care and that they put an effort, rather than me giving them an explicit Christmas list and explicitly same things that they went against or completely ignored. And then afterwards they wouldn’t say something like oh I just didn’t think about it, and that would be a reasonable explanation to me. Like the fact that she crossed my boundaries and immediately again hurt me in those ways and showed me how little I mattered, and her excuse was just the fact that she did not think about it. I deserve to be with someone who has the mental capacity to fucking think about things like that. Because I deserve to take a space in someone’s mind, and if there isn’t enough space to begin with, there’s nothing I can do. When she would give me the space it would feel like it’s suffocates her and gets rid of her as a person, and I fear that maybe that’s just because she did not have enough space to begin with. And I deserve to be with someone who can see me in a much bigger way than what she did. I know that I will never be fully seen, and I know that of course people will not read your mind and fully understand and into it everything that comes to your heart but it shouldn’t be this damn low. There will be someone out there who does not have unresolved baggage. There is nothing wrong with having poor circumstances of birth, and also the ways that we cope with things. But it is your responsibility to deal with that baggage. And that was not something that she had done and that put all of that burden onto me and that crushed me. And I’m right now driving past her school, and where she is. And it hurts, but I also have this desperation and anger that at least lets me advocate for myself enough to not just feel like shit. Because I know that I have the problem from growing up of putting all of my interest all of my feelings and wishes on the back burner, and instead I focused fully on trying to take care of the other person because that’s what I had to do with my mom. And that’s what I also felt like I had to do with her, but I don’t have to do that. And so I’m driving past a lot of memories that I have with her, the constant late nights and the hours of driving I would do just to see her. And I think about all of these sweet memories and I also hold this in mind with the person I share these things with. And even regardless of all of the other bad things, we just were not that compatible in the first place. I think I have very much convince myself how easy it is to love, and I think I almost need to be pickier with who I give that love to. Regardless of if it’s correct or not, my entire life my goal was to be happily married. That was my biggest desire, and it is not right for me to settle for this person. I refuse for something important to just accept the first person that gives me slight scraps, and is in such a drastically different place of overall from me. Like I don’t even know if I mentioned it yet, but I thought earlier about what would happen after she graduated, and she didn’t get any kind of a job, then what? Does she just not pay anything towards rent but lives in this really nice house for free? And on top of it would I then take care of her finances in addition to her parents? And would she continue to waste her money on gifts and small things like snack snacks or food for me when I’m paying for essential things for her. She was not responsible, she is inexperienced in life in a lot of ways, and for me at least my parents stopped micromanaging everything about my life when I entered college. For her her parents still do that, and I’m very grateful that she has a very sweet mom and parents I can financially support her, but at the same time it does hinder her a lot. And that’s not something I want in a partner. I don’t want a partner with these naïve lofty dreams, talking about wanting to buy their own house in their 20s, and getting a nice fancy sports car and customizing it and making it really pretty, and not understanding how certain things in life are absolutely a luxury. Having to reconcile this fantasy world that she has been piggybacked on is something that causes a lot of strife, and it’s something that I don’t want to deal with and I don’t have to. I don’t have to sit and hope that she changes for the better in the immediate big problems, well not even thinking about the fundamental in compatibilities. It hurts a lot, it hurts so much to lose someone that did love you. And it hurts a lot to see how it goes from this cycle of hot and cold to just a permanent cold. But it’s absolutely without a doubt for the best. And I guess I just need to hurt, because I need to let my brain regulate itself and understand that all of his hope and fantasy is gone. And I need to truly feel that in both my brain and my heart. And I think I know that in my brain, but my heart still feels it. And my heart still belongs for her, but it doesn’t even belong for her, as long as for this idealized version of her, as long as for this fantasy that we built together. But there will be someone for sure in the future that will be kind to me, and that will love me, and that will not have all these additional caveat. Absolutely in the future my partner will not be perfect. They are going to have their fair sheriff baggage, as do I. They are going to fuck up, but the difference will be that they can recognize it and take accountability, not just push it off and make it a painful thing to me. They will respect me and they will cherish me, and they will have done similar work to what I’ve done to get to where I am now. And that is the person that I want to raise my future family with. I don’t want the person that I feel like I have to parent, or Coach, or suck up shit from. And I will be able to make so many beautiful memories with those future people, and it might not be the next relationship that’s the one, it might not be the one after that, and I don’t know when it’s gonna be, but I absolutely will be able to make so many even more beautiful memories. Like for fucks sake, one of the happiest memories I have is when I gave her her childhood stuffed animal that she had been searching for for Christmas. And that was the same Christmas that she basically spat on my face, and put so little effort it felt like a direct jab at asking how much I would tolerate. And I know that stuff like giving presents and things like that are stressful, and if you wanna be an adult about it you can speak about those feelings sooner. But instead she just did not put any effort. And that is not what I deserve. I deserve to be loved, and I know that karma exists, and if I do the right things and work on myself and build this life that is beautiful and something that makes me so thankful to be alive for, I will have been so grateful that I got the experience to do it.