Dear Ex,

I wish I told you no.

You were my first love. And it was the perfect first love story: Boy meets girl, boy gets the girl, they fall in love.

However, what they don’t tell you about these stories is the before. And in our case, they didn’t tell us that Boy grew up without a father, and he will never be able to love himself completely. And they didn’t tell us that Girl switched schools so many times that she was afraid of ever becoming attached.

So, after 18 months of needing love but being too afraid to accept it, us two slowly destroyed each other. We would be so happy, we would have the best of times, we would be extremely passionate and felt unstoppable. However, we’d hold in all of our fears because we were trying to keep the other one happy. We we’re too afraid of letting the other person in completely because one of us could leave. And then where would we be? The idea of being permanently lovable was almost as possible as genies or fairies. We had endless amounts of love for the other, we really did. But we subconsciously put up walls to protect ourselves from ever losing it, afraid that once we’d give all that love out, we wouldn’t be able to get it back.

This type of love was so damaging, it led you to cheating. And despite you only truly loving me, one love was not enough to fill the hole your father left in your heart. You needed to feel superior. You needed that dominance. You needed another physical being to provide physical love in a way that I refused. Sweetie, I wish someone had taught you that ‘making love’ does not actually make love.

But of course, you felt that backfire. You took one look at yourself in the mirror and saw the boy staring back at you was no better than the father that had abandoned you. You saw that your promises you made me were suddenly as empty and temporary as the homes I had known over the years. You suddenly began to hate yourself so much that that hatred started to spew into your veins and the coldness of your actions consumed you and left you frozen in a state of destruction.

I swear your smile was never the same. So of course, I left.

However, you had become my home. The place I felt happiest, despite my inner struggles. I used to look at you and feel safety. You were that constant I had always longed for. Which is why 4 months later, I took you back. Which brings us back to the first statement: I wish I told you no.

If I didn’t take you back, I could have ended with closeur. I could have moved on. Hey, moving was something I was good at! But instead we spiraled back into a heap of chaos and I’m questionable if I’ll ever be able to recover.

Ultimately, you taught me that it is best to make homes out of houses, because at least when the walls of a house come tumbling down, there is nothing left. But when your walls came down, you were still the frame of the man I thought I loved, but I could no longer feel the security you had promised before. And as I desperately tried to refill you with the warmth you once had, I wish someone had taught me that ‘making love’ does not actually make love. Again, I wish I told you no.

Love always,
Mckenzie