Dear Aussie,

It’s been almost four years since we met. I know there were so many things wrong with us. But I’ve tried so many times to write this letter and every time I lost momentum because… because I could never find just the right words to say. So, today, tonight, enough of that. 

I’ve just watched a movie called “The Age of Adaline”. I’ve wanted to watch it for a while but only recently did I see that it popped up on Tubi and by God, did it do a number on me. And this isn’t the first time. Movies like “Her”, “5 to 7”, even “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”.. every time I watch a movie like that, about the one that got away, I can’t help but get unbelievably sad. And until tonight, I didn’t know why. Until I realized that… it was because of you.

Because you were the one that got away and I fill my life with these romantic comedies that you say are negatively affecting my worldview. Making me see the world through rose colored glasses when really, I just want to see the happy ending. I want to see proof that I could have something like that. And when the movie doesn’t turn out like that, when I invest ninety minutes of my life into a film, into characters that are hit with heartbreak and then roll credits, I honestly can’t handle it. Because they were my reassurance that everything was going to be alright. That if I didn’t have you, maybe it would be okay. That I could somehow supplement the love you gave, the sheer wonderfulness of you, if I could just have these romantic comedies. Maybe I couldn’t have my happy ending but if I can insert myself into this ninety minute-long world, if I can picture myself as these happy characters for even just a little while, then it’s okay. I can put off the pain of being alone until it’s late at night and I have no one, but I do have your number, memorized by heart. And when it’s 3am and I’m all alone, it gets so hard to not text you.

So here I am with my long list of romantic comedies I wanna watch, and here I go to libraries like the one you used to work at just to borrow them for a short while, in tattered DVD form, yet it doesn’t fill the hole you left. I’ve been so hesitant to find love since you, so dissatisfied with every prospect, because no one’s you. Why did you have to swoop in and make everybody after you pale in comparison? 

Why couldn’t Adaline have been with William? Why did Theodore Twombly have to say goodbye to OS Samantha? Why couldn’t Brian and Arielle have their perfect love? And for the love of God, why did time have to stand in Benjamin and Daisy’s way? But all of these questions are not the one question that I REALLY want answered: Why the hell couldn’t we be together?

It was never “us” that I so deeply wanted. I always knew the idea of “us” was… such a slim chance. Something intangible, trapped in our own separate world. Something so far from reality, like a movie where the only two characters were you and me. It was “you”. The unicorn on the other side of the rainbow that was as good of a fantasy as I could make it. The mere idea of “you” being everything that “I” wanted. Every time that I’d say “I love u….-nicorns, those darned mythical creatures” and you’d reply “and I love u…-niforms, like those jumpsuits the DHARMA folk wore in our favorite show”, I got the same butterflies in my stomach, the same emotional high that I get when Ryan Reynolds kisses Sandra Bullock in front of the whole office, when Anna Kendrick and Chace Crawford set up the Cheesy Pig together, when Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker reconcile after witness protection… because to me, you are my happy ending. And until I have you, it’s nothing but rising action and internal conflict all the way. Us finally meeting in real life is my climax, us growing old together is my falling action, and I want to argue with you about what happens after the end of the story because I know you’re a militant atheist. I’d rather fight with you than make love to anyone else, and I don’t care what Rotten Tomatoes said about that movie, it was fucking great.

I know that, realistically, you had to go. But wasn’t it you that said realism, as opposed to optimism, is just my way of choosing pessimism? Damn it, what about our three year plan? What about the Greyhound tickets you were gonna buy? Who’s going to tell me not to eat eggs because they’re chock-full of lipids, who’s going to blame milk for some cow’s postpartum depression? You’re the one who knew me better than I know myself, claiming that my “whatever”‘s meant I was upset and my “I don’t care”‘s meant I really did care, probably too much. And I still do. The crazy thing is that even though I miss you like crazy, I don’t hope you’re doing okay. I don’t wish you a good life. Hell, I wish you a terrible life. I want you to be miserable. I don’t want you to be with anyone and I don’t want you to have a good job because I need you to be just as much of a wreck as I am. 

Fuck you. Fuck you for not returning my texts, fuck you for not taking me as good enough, and fuck you for making me realize that I will never have a love like the movies.

-M.B.