I’m writing this on the 17th of April, I won’t send it until August (I hope, I’ve stopped drinking for now so I don’t have the drunken letter excuse, maybe I’ll cave in and send it sooner but I hope I don’t, I can’t look at you knowing you’ve read this if you don’t hold me), so if you’re reading this, I’m still thinking about you. I don’t really know how to start, I’m so confused about my emotions towards you. Most of me still loves you, remembers who you used to be and all the beautiful moments we shared, but another part of me is so angry it can’t see any of our relationship as anything but one big manipulative game you played. I’m trying to live in good faith though, so I’m going to assume it did mean something at one point, that at one point you did know what loving someone meant and that our relationship was just too flawed and damaged by the end in your eyes for you to see how much I loved you.

I’m 99% sure you cheated on me, I know you lied to me, I know you led me on for god knows how long, letting me talk about families and marriage and a future together when all you wanted was out, and that hurts so much its made me reinvent myself and look inwards. I feel so much anger towards you some days, and others I find it in myself to forgive you and I think about a future we still could have and how it would work. You refused to tell me the truth and give me closure, and it makes me worried for you. You went from a truthful, honest, loyal person to someone completely different overnight, I don’t know if it was the hurt of my failings that caused that, or something inside of you changed on its own, but I know it hurts to see you become someone new when you were perfect from the moment I first kissed you. If it was the hurt you suffered because of me, then I’m sorry, I’m still apologising even after all this time.

I loved everything about you when we were together, even the things you used to see as flaws, I never thought I’d miss a scar under someones boob or a dry patch of skin but I do. I’ve written so many of these letters and so many are so full of anger, so forgive me if anything comes off as hateful, it isn’t meant to be, I’m tired of hurting people I care about, and you are still one of those people. I don’t regret our relationship anymore, I regret a lot of things I did to hurt you, to turn you into this person I don’t recognise and can’t hold right now, but I don’t regret meeting you. I only regret crying in front of you the day you left. I should have done it so much sooner, when you still cared about me, so you could’ve seen that losing you was the one thing I was scared of the most, so you could have had that vulnerability you begged me for.

I know I wasn’t the best boyfriend, I was trying my best though. I’d like to believe you were too, otherwise you wouldn’t have held on the way I was holding on for so long. I feel like those last few weeks though were just your way of getting revenge, of hurting me like I’d hurt you and damaging things inside of me, it didn’t work, I’m stronger than that and if it wasn’t your intent then don’t worry because I’m still kicking, if a little fucked up inside. We were both flawed people (I’m trying my best to remove every flaw I can, at least the ones that hurt you) when we fell in love and we hurt each other so much, but I still love you, if I don’t then I broke the last promise I made you, and I’m done with breaking promises.

I’m going uni, I don’t know if you’re still coming but part of me hopes you do, just so I can see your face again. If you do I need you to stay away from me unless you can be mine again, it’s not because I hate you, or because I’m bitter, I just need to be away from you if I’m not able to kiss you or hug you from behind like I used to and have you want that too. You said there’s too much history between us for our relationship to work, now I realise that might not have been just about the hurt I caused you, but the hurt you caused me and I buried, I hope time heals those wounds for both of us, maybe when it does we can have one last try, I know that’s all I need, 3 times and if it doesn’t work then I know, despite everything inside me saying that you’re my soulmate, that you’re not.

I still don’t understand so much of what happened towards the end, but I remember feeling sick all night before we broke up, I knew that you didn’t love me anymore and that hurts more than you’ll ever know. I don’t know who you are anymore, I’m glad I don’t, I need to be away from you right now for either of us to be ok and heal. I know who you used to be though, a girl who held my head in her lap and said she wanted love like her parents, I need you to understand I love you like that, even if you don’t want it right now, it’s somewhere out there with me and if you ever want that again all you have to do is find me and we can fix things, until then though I need you to heal yourself while I heal the parts of me you broke. I don’t blame you anymore, I would have never let you go, even if it killed both of us, I was so scared of being on my own or losing you that I was willing to let the weight of our relationship drown us both.

I’m letting go, ever so slightly so we can both breathe again, but I need you to understand that I still love you, I will always want you to be mine and to be yours. In a lot of ways I still am yours, don’t treat that like nothing, just be careful with it until you can come home to me. I will always hold onto the memories we made together, even though I don’t remember you giving me a haircut, I remember watching stars fall in my garden, I remember watching Garfield on New Years, I remember kissing your forehead so many times as you slept in my bed, I remember how beautiful you looked every morning when the sun hit your eyes, I remember kissing you for the first time (and feeling so at home in that moment – I ran from that for so long, thats why I struggled to let you in completely, if I did I knew losing you would kill me), I remember you trying to flirt with me on chess.com. I remember you dribbling on my arm in your sleep, I remember so many beautiful memories that I shared with you, I just wish one day we can make more. 

Thats basically it, I’ve wrote letters that go for pages, but I figured short and sweet is easier for both of us, and this is the first letter I wrote that isn’t pathetic begging or filled with anger. I’ve probably thrown some things in this letter that I don’t want anymore or belong to you, don’t talk to me about emotional labour, we built a life together and it was in my home not yours (I don’t blame you or judge you for that though, I’m kind of glad, it made life easier and I loved every second of your presence in my space) so its only fair that you get rid of these things considering I can’t burn my house down to forget about you, maybe you’ll give them back one day, when you’re mine again, but I won’t blame you or be angry if you throw them away (I’m keeping the croagunk keychain tho, I don’t wear it anymore but its cool as fuck, even if it makes me feel weird inside to look at).

Don’t tell me to let you go, or to move on, I have in my own way, got as close as I ever will to moving on from you I guess, considering all the things we spoke about, all those plans for the future we made. This is just one last thing I need to do in order to find some peace with this, to not self destruct everyday thinking about what could’ve been. If you want to respond to this, even if it’s to tell me you hate my guts and hope I blow my brains out, it’d be nice to have you say the honest truth about your own feelings, god knows neither of us had the strength to be honest at times. Maybe you’ll respond saying we can try again one day but I won’t hate you if you don’t, even though I don’t want anyone else and probably never will, I don’t have time or energy to invest in someone like I did with you, I put every last ounce of effort I had left into trying to fix our relationship, I just didn’t have the tools to do it, and it felt like we couldn’t communicate clearly by the end.

I have one life, and unless that energy and time goes to you, then its mine and I’ll use it on myself, other people aren’t worthy and I refuse to let someone in like I let you in, plus you kinda brainwashed me to associate everything to do with sex and love with your body and your face. If you need any proof that I can’t hurt you again (assuming some part of you misses me in the same way I miss you – big assumption I know), realise how much strength it takes for someone who’s been hurt like you hurt me, to forgive the person who caused all their pain and still love them, and then be open about that, even though you might still be angry enough that you’ll share this with your friends and laugh at me, not that it matters, I have only a few more weeks left in this town and then I’ll probably never lay eyes on you again without you actively finding me, plus I don’t know or care about the people you’ve surrounded yourself with recently.

Love and Light, until I see you again,
Heal those parts of yourself and find me, if not then I guess I’ll see you in the waiting room for heaven, or whatever comes next, we can have a fistfight or we can kiss and make up, either way I just want some honesty from the both of us. If reincarnation is real I hope we’re frogs or housecats, I know love for them must be a lot more simple than the mess of emotions humans are capable of, plus I know you’d probably like being a frog or a cat. Send my love to your mum, your sister, the dog and the cat, I hope they’re all ok, I know you were worried about the cat getting old so I hope she’s ok and still there for you. I really wanted to be part of your family, maybe one day I still could be, but for now I have my own, my friends and my work and all the other people that have dragged my borderline suicidal ass for a month, I’m glad I have them. 

I regret messaging your friend by the way, I just really wanted to hurt you like you hurt me, I realise now that wasn’t fair on anyone, even if it didn’t upset you it was done in bad faith and was really just a pointless, childish attempt at getting my own back. I don’t have energy for that shit anymore, holding onto that anger will only burn me. That and to be truthful when she sent that photo all I cared about was the tattoo you got, it looks good. I don’t know if I’ll have any tattoos by the time you get this letter (they’re stupid expensive, you’re balling as fuck to afford that?! – feel less bad about asking you to pay me back for the vapes now, although I guess you probably spent a small fortune on orangina for me) but I’m hoping I’m slightly jacked, partly because you made me so insecure about my body from what you did, and partly because I wanted to be as physically strong as I was mentally to survive this. 

If you ever do want to come back, for the right reasons (not because you know I care about you and you can use me for validation or security, but because you just want to love me the way I love you), then you need to understand that we will be 2 completely new people, I know this last month I’ve changed more than the 2 years we spent together, I’ve chiseled away my self-doubt, my fear of the future, my fear of failure and become a lot more driven, and I’m assuming who you’ve become is different and new. We won’t be the same people who hurt each other so much. As much as I’d love to get to know the new you, I need you to understand that if we try one last time (3rd times the charm) that I need a blank slate, I need a whole new set of firsts with you, and I promise I’ll do better than “kinda pretty” the first time I hit on you. “Kinda pretty” is an understatement compared to how beautiful you are in my eyes, even though you’ve hurt me so bad recently, you’re still smoking hot shawty. Hell maybe by the time you come back you’ll be a milf, fuck knows – although tbh you’ll ever not be beautiful to me (sorry if that was crass, figured ending on a joke couldn’t hurt, I just miss hearing your laugh).