Dear Stranger,

      This has been so much harder than I anticipated.  Maybe you noticed my FB is gone, but I don’t know.  I sent one last message, but you never read it.  It’s been really difficult to deal with things as they are now, especially on days like today, where, for some reason, our songs kept playing in my head all day.  I’ve been resisting the urge to go through the box I put our stuff in.

      This winter feels exceptionally colder than last winter.  I miss having my blanket.

      I feel like I’ve said a lot of different things.  I feel like I’ve repeated some of the same things ad nauseum, but it’s just what was going through my mind at the time.  Thinking about things from even more perspectives, and after reading more letters, I guess I haven’t gotten out everything I’ve needed to.  I keep thinking of something I want to say to you, even though I’m supposed to be getting used to the idea of never talking to you again.  Maybe that’s why I keep thinking of things to say?

      I don’t think of you as a bad person, and I never really did.  If I ever spoke bad of you, it was to myself, in my head, or in some other letter I wrote in a journal.  I still think of you as the same person I knew for almost 3 years, and maybe that has something to do with why this has been so difficult.  It was almost like the last week or two I was talking to a completely different person.  Honestly, I feel like I may as well have been talking to your mother or sister; that’s how different it was.

      Just that radical departure from who I knew you to normally be haunts me, and leaves a foul taste behind.  I can’t imagine you being that person now, and, if that is who you are, I can’t imagine how it’s not killing you to be that.  Either way, I’ll always think of you as the woman I was in love with, and I’ll always carry that love with me.  Sometimes my memory of you is so strong I feel like I don’t need you to be around.  That you’re somehow inherently part of everything I do.

      I’ve written three more songs about you since June.  This last one has been the most eclectic, complicated thing I’ve ever made, but it’s beautiful.

      When I think about how we broke up, and what lead up to it…thinking about it, it almost reminds me of ‘White Fang’ for some reason.  I know I pushed you away, and basically said “This is for the best”.  It’s not because I fell out of love with you, or that something was wrong with you, or that I didn’t want “us” anymore.  I honestly felt like it was the best thing for you, based on how you, your interests, and your schedule were changing.  Yeah, you could have done many of the things you did and are doing now and still be in a relationship with me, but I felt like being single would give you the greatest uninhibited range of access to everything that was going to become available to you.  I felt like you should be able to reap the full benefits of everything you’d put the effort in to achieve, and have your “moment in the sun” in that town for once, and make even more great memories with even more great people, just to further prove to you that not all people are assholes, and that people can and will like you for who you are.

      As much as I loved feeling special, I wanted you to find out it wasn’t just me that saw something special in you.  That other people were just as capable of seeing it and appreciating it too.  That I wasn’t the only one that could boost you up and make you feel good about yourself.  That I wasn’t the only one capable of loving you.  From what I’ve seen, I have confidence you’ve seen these things, and my plan worked as I thought.

      It sucks, because I never stopped caring about you, never started caring less.  I know some people might think it astonishingly backwards, and even I don’t understand it sometimes myself.  I guess, at it’s worst, it was a twisted variation of the “If you love something, let it go” idea.  It’s because I love you and care about you like I do that I wanted you to have the different experiences you’ve been having, and get that happiness from others.  Feel that it’s okay to bond with others, and be free to make new friends so you’re not constantly getting shang-hi’d into doing “The Bitches'” hair all the time.  Have it so you could make enough new friends to say “forget you hos”, because I always hated hearing you say how used and unappreciated you felt around them, and you deserved better than that.

      You deserved so much better than the past you told me about, and how people used to treat you.  How unhappy and alone you were for so much of it.  I wish dealing with the pain and confusion of a break-up that seemed to have come out of nowhere wasn’t a part of that, but I really do hope you’ve been having the time of your life.  Maybe it was the dumbest, most misguided move ever, but I really did think I was “doing the right thing”.  I’ll be horribly embarrassed if I’m wrong, but I’m fairly confident I’m not.

      THAT is what I always meant by “I don’t care about ‘me'”.  You made me deliriously happy, you’re astoundingly beautiful, inside and out, and you’re a great person.  It’s not that I don’t care about my own happiness, it’s that I’m willing to sacrifice my own happiness if someone I care about will benefit from it.  You deserved to experience better than your past, and you were in the perfect position to do so.  That’s why I pushed you away.

      It’s not that I didn’t want to fight for you, or fight for ‘us’.  I still do.  It’s hard to ‘kill’ those feelings, and I have doubts that I will.  On the one hand, it kills me to know what I’m missing, but on the other, it makes me happy to know what you’re not.  Maybe I’m just fucked in the head, I don’t know.

      It’s not that I want you to leave me alone.  In all honesty, I’d love to talk to you, but I’m stubborn.  I think you’re better off, I think I’m doing the right thing, and I’m going to keep going ’til it doesn’t kill me anymore.  If I’m wrong, if you want to talk, just do it, because I’m resigned to marching.  Otherwise…this is the last I can watch.

      If you’re not seeing these, I’m talking to a wall.  If you see them, but hold contempt for me, I feel rather foolish.  If you see them, but have been afraid to act, don’t be.

      You’re going to kick the pants off of this “life” thing, and whether you know it, or want it, or not, I’m cheering for you.  You are a one-woman “Tiny Potato Army”.  I always wanted this to be said at the end of every conversation we had, just in case something happened to one of us, and I never got a chance to say anything else.  In case it ended up being the last thing you heard from me.  I love you.