letters to the past
I cannot believe all that both of us have put up with from each other over the years. (Yes, I gave you a lot of pain. There’s no way I’m going to deny that. I’m sorry, for what it’s worth.)
I’ve known you for nearly half my life (off and on) and I think I’ve earned the right to be able to call your crap. You were my best friend. At one point, you were even my other half. You knew me upside down and inside out. And I’m fed up with your bullshit. (well, I was a while ago, but only thought to write this now.)
Let’s face it: we’re still going to keep running into each other due to various family connections and church and such (or because fate likes to make you her bitch), so hey guess what, we’re going to hash this out.
A) I contacted you again because I missed you. You were, at one time, the one person who knew me best, and I don’t believe in just tossing that aside lightly. I never learned the concept of “letting go.” and I never thought I would have to, when it came to you. However, you can relax. I did not want to ‘pick things up again’ because of several reasons, not the least of which was our personalities and the way we meshed. Bad idea all the way around. So stop acting so jumpy. I thought I’d made that clear, but I guess I should’ve set it in stone.
(And, to my surprise, contacting you worked! I loved being able to talk to you, to share, to have a small part of that old, pre-disaster connection. It was good, it was fun, it was “us” again. then… wtf.)
B) Like you said, I’ve changed. Grown-up me doesn’t believe in holding back, or pretending. Life is too short for games. There is a part of me that still loves you, (not in the ‘hey let’s date’ way, or the ‘unrequited’ way, but the ‘old friends who shared a lot’ affectionate way), and I probably always will. I’m not going to pretend that you didn’t mean a lot to me, or that you didn’t have a lot of influence in my life. (Not all of it was positive, but we’re human and that’s life.)
C) Good things about you: the way you are able to be attentive to the little things. don’t change that.
D) Bad things about you: never ever ever EVER tell a girl what is wrong with her physical appearance. We know. I still can’t believe I put up with it from you, or that you would have the sheer jackassery to even say it. It still makes me wish I had just outright punched you in the face.
E) Grown-ups say “hey, I’m seeing somebody, so peace.” or whatever excuse you want to use. (Even that is rude, but whatever.) Dropping off the face of the planet is the most cowardly of all possible recourses you could’ve used. And that’s sad. Even for you. I know you take ‘non-confrontation’ to new levels of ridiculous, but really. Man up. Even the unspoken one had the fortitude to call me, and he was the scum of the earth.
F) Along those lines, yes, the bf and I are together. I guess it’s not surprising to a lot of people, but it’s something that really never occurred to me before. I guess I win that age-old question of whether he loves you more than he loves me.
G) If you’re happy, then great. Really. I hope the east coast is amazing for you. If I ever see you again, I’ll smile and be nice, because like I said, life is too short for pretending. I just didn’t want to leave anything unsaid.
I’ll be honest, I’ve wished that I could just banish you forever. I know you said that it’s hard for you to ignore me, and that you wanted to see if I’d “reconnect the threads” or something. The truth is, I don’t think those ‘threads’ will ever fully break. And it frustrates me. A lot. You’ve said before that I was the one person you could count on for the rest of your life. Well… I’m holding that end of the bargain. Yes, our love has changed (drastically) from what it was. Perhaps, in your case, it’s faded entirely.
I give up. I’m putting all my cards on the table, because I’m at a place where it’s okay for me to completely humiliate myself in front of people who have demonstrated that they could care less whether I take a flying leap into the lake or whatever nonsense phrase you’d like to use. (It helps, I suppose, to know that I have someone who loves me and has never treated me half as badly as you did at one point.)
Let’s review, okay?
no more crap… I missed you, not in love with you, there’s a big difference… ummm… good and bad… other people…. oh yes. one last thing.
I have bigger balls than you.
Have a nice life.
Letters to the past
Dear Jerk:
It’s funny, really. You’re the most impulsive person I know, and yet you see yourself as cool, logical, even-headed.
You rushed into the relationship so quickly I’m not sure you even thought about what that would mean. I got swept into the whirlwind romance of it all, suddenly and deeply “in love” so fast that I couldn’t quite see (let alone think) straight.
And it was over, just as swiftly. You were in love with the feeling, chasing it with whomever you could until you got what you wanted deserved.
You insist you still love me, even though we cannot be together and irrevocable decisions have been made. Mostly on your part. By your poor impulse control and your inability to keep it in your pants.
What part of “Goodbye” is unclear to you?
Which word in “Let me move on” do you not understand?
In what way could I rephrase “Leave me the hell alone” so that you can gather the full meaning and the implications involved?
Dear Ex-First-Love:
You are in my brain. I can ignore you easily for the most part, but I’ll see your car model, a camera, certain types of music, and there you are again. It’s as if I can hear your voice in my head, a running commentary on my day-to-day actions, decisions, and circumstances.
Please. Get out. Leave me alone.
And that part of my soul, the one that seems to belong to you? Please leave it behind when you go. I want it back now. I know I said I’d love you forever, but I’m tired of forever. I want to be free.
I’m tired of memories of you coming up and getting in the way of my memories of the boyfriend. I know we grew up together, the four of us, (you, me, the bestie, and the boyfriend), so of course you’ll be there. But I want to look back with fewer regrets. I’m tired of nearly choking on all the words left unspoken, all the bottled memories I have to suppress. I want to move on completely.
I just want closure. You see, ten years of friendship plus a two-year-relationship stint means that there will always be loose ends and lingering feelings. But it’s been four and a half fucking years. There have been others since you, but somehow none of them have managed to stick the way you have. Maybe because you were so good at the manipulation and the emotional abuse.
Jackass.
Fuck off and leave me alone.
Dear Pseudo:
Our relationship has been the most confusing of all. My subconscious still isn’t quite sure how to characterize you, and whenever you come to mind, pain and regret at all that was left unsaid is sure to follow. So many of my day-to-day memories are full of moments with you. Hell, we lived life alongside each other for a good two to three years, so of course I can’t see a blender without thinking of you, or wander down store aisles without hearing your quips about various products. I can’t cook without hearing your instructions in my head; for crying out loud, I still move around the kitchen as if you’re there with me, dancing around each other as we prepare amazing food for friends. I still feel you brushing past me when I reach for ingredients, your hand on my back as I open the oven door.
You started dating her and got engaged so fast that everyone was left stammering, most of all me. (I mean, come on. Two months?? That’s faster than most couples in Hollywood.)
I felt like Sally, sobbing to Harry that, “He just met her… She’s supposed to be his transitional person, she’s not supposed to be the ONE. All this time I thought he didn’t want to get married. But, the truth is, he didn’t want to marry me. He didn’t love me.”
Why? What was so wrong with me? Why didn’t you want me?
If I could take you back now, would I? Of course not. I love the boyfriend, and we much better suited for one another. But… why? There’s this big gaping hole in my heart and I don’t know how to fix it, and I feel like I can’t move on with the boyfriend until I understand why.
Because life doesn’t work that way. It’s always neat and tidy, you always have an explanation, and even though breakups are messy and spew hurt everywhere, you at least get all the answers out there.
…right?
I now understand what my bestie felt like, when her first love got married. The whole time he and that other girl were dating, we’d nod sagely to one another and comment how it was clear that they didn’t belong together because he had totally changed himself for her, and she’d become what she thought he wanted, and it bugged the two of us that neither one of them were being honest with each other, let alone the world.
But then they got married, and she was left standing there, still hurt, confused and rationalizing. Now they’re pregnant, and I still see the pain in her eyes as she tries to reconcile the fact that he’s a completely different person than the man who loved her.
I understand.
Why?
And why do I still miss you so much?
I feel like (and you’ll laugh) Rogue, when she was stuck with the memories of all the people she’d touched. They have all become a part of me, and time isn’t healing as fast as it should.
I wish I hadn’t been so free with love, but that’s the way I am. I love deeply and for a long time. It sucks but it’s me.
I don’t think I’d change anything, because I’m glad of the damage even with the lingering memories. It’s changed me, made me stronger, helped me grow, and I can relate to others that much more. And all of them have helped me love the boyfriend more and more and more, because he truly is my match.
The tragedy of memory
Just kidding (about “oh happy day”). I guess the pain is still there, just buried, and it takes another medium to bring it all screaming back to the surface again. This time, the medium was “The Fountain.”
Sometimes I think that memory is one of the greatest faults of humanity, the tragic flaw that allows us to hold on to bitterness, resentment, unfulfilled desires, anger, sorrow, grief and hope. Yes, I would even consider hope a tragic flaw, because it brings so much pain to our lives when it is left unfulfilled or broken.
I can’t watch The Fountain, or listen to the soundtrack, without my heart breaking all over again. We would watch it together, he and I, as he would trace promises onto my skin and wipe away my tears, promising that we would be like the immortal lovers on screen, finding one another through time over and over again.
I will never forget the sound my heart made when I discovered that he had… well, amongst other things, knocked her up.
I cover up the memories with anger, bitterness, even caustic humor, but there is still deep, wordless pain there. He hurt me, broke my heart, abandoned me, only to resurface again with a new life, sheepish apology on his face as he watched my world fall down around my ears.
I thought that he was The One. I had thought that we were supposed to be together, and we’d live in a perfect little house and raise children and fight and grow old together. We were going to live on the island, and he was going to buy me a piano, and our kids would walk to school while I was a wife and he taught as a college professor. (Maybe I was trying to recreate my own childhood, in that future. After all, we were all much happier.)
Then.
Suddenly I was no longer innocent, no longer believed in happily ever after or even love at all. But the memories were still there, haunting, hurting, tearing me apart. I forced myself to move on, to grow up, to repress the memories.
And this damn movie brings every single one back, sharp as the first time I experienced them.
I need the boyfriend to hold me, tell me that everything is going to be okay because we won’t fail, that he would never leave me, that our love is for life.
But I know that I need to heal. I need to push through the hurt and pain by myself so that I can believe him when he tells me that this is real, this is the lasting good love. I don’t want to use him as a crutch, I want to be able to trust him fully.
And as time goes on, as our relationship grows, I find the past hurts slowly healing with each new experience, as he slowly proves just by living that no, he’s not going to leave me and yes, he does love me more than himself.
Our love may not be the insane tilt-a-whirl crazy ride of ups and downs that I had with him, but it’s the Good, solid kind that is going to last.
And I need to remember that, no matter what.
Oh happy day!
I have become accustomed to the random pangs of old hurts and unfinished business that still accompany flashbacks. When my first ex-boyfriend crosses my mind, there are still feelings of frustration and resentment that roil just beneath the surface. I try not to ever think about the two or three that came after him, because I usually want to squirm with embarrassment and hide my face in mortification and mumble “oh my God what was I thinking?” And when the Pseudo comes to mind, he’s accompanied with sadness and a vague feeling of loss, but no sharp stabbing pain, thankfully.
But. There was one relationship that really tore me apart. I had never loved that deeply, felt that intensely head-over-heels crazy for another person before. He knew all the right words to say, and had me completely swept off my feet in a matter of months. I was ready to turn my life upside down and inside out for him. Thank God that life interfered, and, due to external forces (well, mainly he turned out to be a cheating scummy bastard who knocked up the girl he slept with), we broke up. Actually, I got my first taste of “oh, wow, he’s quite a piece of work,” and realized that I had to be the one to break up with him because he wasn’t going to do it himself.
Long story short, I did, but it was the most painful process I had ever gone through. It took a very long time to get him all the way out of my life, but I was able to do it, with the help of some of the most amazing friends that I’ve been blessed to have. You should all be jealous. They rock.
Unfortunately, I can really pick winners. This one has the annoying tendency to pop up every two months or so, trying to weasel his way back into my life, no matter how I avoid or block him. (And to think, persistence was a character trait I had loved in him.) Whenever he does, he manages to dredge up all of the past sorrow and loss with him, leaving me feeling hurt all over again and frustrated that I let him get to me.
It happened again, recently. He came stumbling drunkenly back into my life, and I took a deep breath and internally steeled myself against all the hurt and pain that invariably rises to the top whenever he reappears.
And waited.
Counted to twenty, opened one eye cautiously (metaphorically speaking, of course).
Uh, hello? Agony, are you there? Pain, sorrow, regret? Guys?
I began cautiously letting out the air I’d inhaled in preparation for the oncoming sucker punch. What was going on?
I… I think I’m over him.
That’s not to say that I am exempt from the pain of old scars, but I am pretty sure that past regrets are over and done with.
I think it has something to do with the fact that The Boyfriend is in my life. Not only that, but I trust him, I’m comfortable with him, I love him deeply (but not crazy), and he knows me. We’ve known one another for 13 years; he knows me inside out. He actually helped me get through the breakup. I know that he would never cheat on me, that he loves me perhaps more than I love him (but he doesn’t, because I love him more), and that my life is on the Right Path.
I always felt vaguely guilty that I still had hurt and sorrow in my memories even when I’m with The Boyfriend now. I mean, I’m with him, so my past is invalid, right?
No, they will always be there. One or two will even have pieces of my heart, possibly forever. After all, they were important parts of my life, and just because time has moved on doesn’t render them invalid.
But I no longer have to feel the hurt and pain associated with them.
Oh happy day!
Being human is no fun
…sometimes.
There are moments when I realize that my dog is infinitely happier than I am.
There are also times when being human means we make mistakes. We experience pain. And, since we haven’t reached enlightenment (yet…, or at least I’m the last to know), our past can still bring us pain.
For example: I’ve been in a few relationships. Since they are in my past, it is safe for you to assume that they failed. And unfortunately, most of them failed miserably (actually most were spectacularly awful). They failed for a number of reasons, but they each had one thing in common.
There was always another woman.
And yes, these experiences have changed me. I have grown from each encounter, I believe into a better person. However, there is one drawback: I have become a jealous person.
It’s painful to realize. I used to be carefree. I used to skip blithely through life, uncaring who my significant other talks to, works with, hangs out with when they’re not with me…. I didn’t care. I figured, hey, they have chosen to date me, so what could happen?
But after the first decided to leave me so he could date his co-worker, the second admitted that he was in love with his best (married) friend and she was leaving her husband for a trial separation so they could “see what happens,” and the third actually slept with his ex behind my back and got her pregnant, (then decided to “do the right thing” and marry her) (God he was such a winner), I have become slightly jumpy.
After all, they say that the only common factor in all your dysfunctional relationships is you. (or something to that effect.)
So it isn’t too hard to understand that I would be worried when his ex comes up often in conversations and likes to stalk him online and just so happens to remain involved in many of their past social activities.
Ugh. Love is hard. It’s difficult to care about someone, because then they have the power to hurt you.
A cautionary tale
I regret:
…letting go of the one who cared enough to try to understand me, who would massage my feet after a long day, who took me to the beach for our break-up scene so that we’d have a suitable backdrop for the emotional turmoil and pain we were experiencing.
…falling heedlessly into a series of relationships (to use the term loosely) with men who cared little for my mind and even less for my soul, and losing a piece of me each time.
…allowing someone to seduce me easily, with beautiful words and poignant memories, who effortlessly twisted me into his personal plaything at his beck and call, leaving behind a broken shell after he lost interest.
…letting fear control me and allowing the opinion of others to weigh more than my own.
…choosing to follow another’s advice instead of my own intuition.
…remaining silent.
<.>
Dear reader,
Don’t make the same mistakes.
Memories
I loved you (so very much). I swore that my life could not go on without you in it (it couldn’t). I saw each new day as empty, useless (it was). I was lethargic and depressed (for a long while).
And then, one day, I looked up. I saw that the sky was my favorite (cloudy and overcast, which usually cheers me up instead of the opposite effect it seems to have on everyone else). I found myself smiling at the frazzled cashier in an effort to make her day a bit smoother. Then I let another driver go ahead of me during rush hour.
There was the answer. Simple, day-to-day living, human interaction, and one step at a time. I could move on without you (somehow). Not all at once, and I had to fight against collapsing into tears every time something reminded me of you (every minute). I could live without you (just barely).
But there are days when I want nothing more than to find my way back to you (in your arms, where I belong). I want to just cry and let you hold me again (for the last time). I want to laugh with you and see your face light up with joy at my reaction. I want you to touch me (possessively). I want to be with you again.
Too bad you’re a jackass. Thank God I have the willpower to be able to stay far away (where I actually belong).
