I’m supposed to be figuring out how to break up with my boyfriend-thing but instead I’m writing you because this is far easier than that.

Two years ago, when the guy I was dating broke up with me, I was knocked on my ass. I didn’t expect it. I felt terrible. For some reason I had put a ton of hope into that relationship. I cried at work for like three days. It was so embarrassing. I decided then that I was not going to let myself feel bad like that ever again.

I actually did it for quite a while. I didn’t have sex for almost a year – on purpose. I hooked up with a friend I’ve known for a decade, and since then, I have only hooked up with people from the kink community. Furthermore, the majority of those encounters have occurred at events in front of other people. That’s such a strange statement: most of the sex I have had in the last year has been with other people watching. Rules and expectations are different at kink parties. I was able to exist in that place with my guard up.

When I realized you were from my hometown, I absolutely did get worried about perception. But even before that, I had been worried about liking you. That’s the part I didn’t explain at all before. I haven’t let myself have a crush like that on anyone in two years. (But Maggie, don’t you have a boyfriend? Right. One I met at a polyamory party. It’s a horse of a different color.)

That date with you was like, top three first dates of my life. I wanted to go out that one time so I could know it wasn’t going to go anywhere. That’s what I meant when we talked the next day. I had been planning to say thanks but no thanks to going out again. I didn’t want to like you. I truly did a terrible job explaining that, since I hurt your feelings. The problem was, I did like you. I really liked you. And I didn’t remember how to gracefully navigate a one-on-one situation.

That’s why I’ve been ruminating and obsessing. Listen. I’m not proud of it. I know I seem like a crazy person. It was the first time I had let my guard down at all in the last two years and I got emotionally sucker-punched. I wasn’t expecting anything. I didn’t want anything. Then there was something. Then there wasn’t something.

I don’t remember what I told you about my partner and his ex; I was trying to avoid talking about it. That situation has gotten weirder and weirder until now I feel like I have no other choice but to break up with him and remove myself from my group of friends. That sucks. All of that sucks. My feelings are all messed up together. Rejection. Fear. Anxiety. Bitterness. Inadequacy. My interaction with you fit right in with the rest of it in a way that made me incredibly full of self-doubt and self-hate.

I hope you can see now that you’re further away from it that people wouldn’t likely assume that I was talking about you when I @-ed you. (Which was, admittedly, not cool.) I could have been a friend who you already knew was going through a hard time. I could have been a crazy online stranger. I wasn’t strictly talking about you. I was talking about my whole current shitshow.

I wanted to explain. I wanted to say I’m sorry again for being hurtful, then slightly unhinged. I never claimed to be well-adjusted.