C,

Today I hate you. So much so that I actually cried. Real tears. The kind that blur your vision. I haven’t cried since the first week you left. I walked down to the river and bawled my eyes out so much that I guess I didn’t need to cry again. Not until now. It’s been almost a year now. Please note that my tears were not because I miss you but because the sting of HOW you left still pierces my through my heart; and today.. well I guess it struck a nerve. I do miss things about you. Don’t get me wrong. Oh I’m sure you’ve moved on and are over me now. Convinced it was the right decision and that the way you left was perfectly acceptable. But it wasn’t. It was low. The lowest of the low. Some days I replay it over and over in my head until I become angry all over again. I can’t seem to wrap my head around how demoralizing that was. I think of ways to get back at you, at ways to show others how it really ended. I entertain the idea of sending our break up text conversation to all of your friends, and family, or posting it on the internet, or sending it to a radio station, so that everyone can know how much of a coward you were when it all happened. Because no one would believe it otherwise.

I still can’t believe it happened this way. But it did. And that’s why I cried today. Because had it ended in a way where you could have let me down gently and respectfully, I would not be feeling this way today. I imagine myself showing up at your door and slapping you across the face. Or rewind back and wish I had confronted you – forced you to give me closure when it was all happening. Then there are days where I hope you’re doing ok, but not well. Fine, but not great. There are days I hope you’re awesome, but at the same time I hope that your thoughts drift to me, frequently, smiling and doing better than ever, having a great time without you, being the best I can be and you don’t get to see it, and I hope that you get stings too when you think of it. I want you to feel the pain that you caused me. Not forever. But just so you know how badly it hurt and how easy it would be for you to take it away from me, and for us to have moved on more easily. Assuming it wasn’t easy for you. It didn’t hurt so much that you walked away, what hurt the most was how you left. How you played it as if everything was fine and dandy, right up until those last few moments. The way you made everything seem fine right up until the end. The way you blamed a cancer patient at your school for the sadness you’d have when you came home sometimes, instead of telling me that you were feeling the way you were feeling.

It hurts because we almost had a child together. I often hope that you miss me and wonder if maybe you made a mistake. I often wish you have breakup remorse, and guilt. I don’t want you to want me back, because I sure as shit wouldn’t take you back. Not because you don’t have it in you to be a better man, but because I could never love you again. Or trust you. I don’t want you to feel unnecessary pain, no. I just want you to feel enough of whatever it would take to make you do what was right. No, we weren’t meant to be, but that isn’t a reason to treat someone the way you did me. I wish you were a better person, one who cared about other peoples’ wellbeing enough to recognize that everyone deserves a face-to-face break up. A truthful, heartfelt, honest, goodbye. We’re all just people. We all have feelings. We’re all actually quite fragile, even though we’re not supposed to show that. But we are. And you broke me worse than anyone because of the lack of respect you were able to give me, considering what we went through together. I wouldn’t know how to act around you if I saw you again. I have seen you since, a few times…and it was less painful then than I know the next time will be, for whatever reason. Maybe because I thought back then that by now you would have come around to approaching me to grant me proper closure. And to grant yourself proper closure. I guess that’s the humor in it all. That by you walking away in the manner that you did, you caused yourself more pain. By you not talking to me, you caused yourself more pain. By you being dishonest, you cost us both the entire relationship. I hope one day you see and understand all of this.

With each passing day, I have to be more and more okay with the fact that you never truly planned on giving me that closure, even though you said you would, and I have to be strong for myself, and know that it’s up to me, and me alone, to gently close that door on you, and lock it, find my own closure. To walk away with my head up, even though it will be down and I will shake it when I think of how much more pain you will put yourself through in life if that is how you view relationships and believe that that is also an acceptable way for them to end. The tears stream down my face knowing that the conversation I have in my mind with you will never actually happen; the one where you’re the man I thought you were, a better man than who you are, the conversation where you cry, across from me, as I cry too, in relief for both of us to get this out in the open, and you tell me all the real reasons you left, why you pretended everything was alright right up until the end, what you felt was lacking and why it made you walk away. How you felt like you tried, how you felt like you talked to me, and then me telling you how I felt like you didn’t, ever, at all. It will all fade away slowly, and the examples of when you tried or when I tried will all become a blur. So the conversation where we can just be real people together, for each other, and apologize for it not working even though it’s not either of our faults, for not communicating in a way that each other understood, for not trying harder, appreciating each other more, for both our faults and our quirks, can never happen anyway because the inaccuracies in our memories will be overtaken with ways we choose to remember it in order for both of us to truly move on from one another and not feel pain anymore from the day we parted ways.

It’s not like there aren’t other fish in the sea, it’s not like I didn’t love you either. Yes I was having doubts too, but at the end of it all, I would have never ever left you with unanswered questions had I left before you. I would have never done to you what you did to me. I would have ensured that when we parted ways that you got that one last hug, that one last question answered, that one last moment together where we’d have to tear ourselves apart both knowing it was for the best, even if it killed me. Yes I would have given you that. Because that is what love is for another person. And I guess what also kills me now, is thinking that you were a good enough person to do me the same courtesy if it came down to that for you. But you absolutely did not. I feel like you treated me as if I didn’t deserve any extra favors. You made me feel as if…since we were now over, my feelings now didn’t need to be taken into consideration because they were no longer your concern. You didn’t know that you could actually benefit from giving me closure, because then you would actually get it too. In a beautiful and sincere way. But. I wasn’t worth the words. I wasn’t, as a person, worth even a sideways glance. I wasn’t worth it to be honest to for the whole last month of our relationship you could have been real with me instead of feeding me a facade, lies, and sugarcoating everything. You left without a single reason provided. None of it was my fault apparently. Which is a cop out, I am intelligent enough to know that no relationship ends “just because”. There was no face to face. Just. Gone. But you said you would give me one. You said. May I remind you that you spoke of kids, engagement, loving me, supporting me always, and that you brought home flowers, and told me that you wanted me “badly” the very same day you left. Why? How could you tell me these things yet KNOW that you were coming home to tell me goodbye.

So what if maybe that wasn’t meant for you and I. It shouldn’t take away from the amount of respect we had for one another. We still shared part of our lives together, more so with anyone else during the time we were together. So many questions that I have, and answers I can only create from a memory of you. A memory of a person that isn’t even accurate to the true character of the person in my mind. A better man. A real man. Yes, I hate you, and in time I hope that this goes away, not because I believe right now that you deserve to be thought of in a better light later on, but so that I can free myself from these periodic breakdowns. Free from the pain. Because it still lingers, and I can only speculate why. But it is there. Your underdeveloped sense of compassion and communication is the reason I hate you. But only for now. Because tomorrow, I might only think of the good things you brought to my life. And tomorrow I might feel bad about some of the things I’ve written here. Or I might not think of you at all. But right now, my sadness and anger is enough that it has fuelled the inspiration to write this letter. Please know that if you could ever muster enough courage to talk to me like a human being and tell me that you are sorry, it would be welcomed. And I would tell you that I’m sorry too. No we don’t have to cry, I would I’m sure anyway. But, I feel like I deserve the truth. And not knowing why you left and why you felt like I didn’t deserve that at the very least that is what really hurts the most. I hope you still cry. I hope some days when you’re sitting alone that thoughts of me drift into your mind, even if you have a new girlfriend, or a wife, and I hope they are enough to stir up feelings in your chest and not just in your mind. I hope you still dream of me and they aren’t always pleasant and that some of them haunt you for years to come. Especially after you become a father. I hope that when you have a child, you think of me and the one we almost had. And I hope one day you understand how hard of a decision that was for me to make. I hope that when I see you, you understand my hostility, or my silence. If you don’t, I hope you have brains enough to know that it’s because you said you would give me a face to face conversation, but you never did. You can’t be without a heart and a brain, can you? Today I hate you. Tomorrow…….