Dear C,

I met you in school when we where both 11 years old.
At 13, you smiled at me across the biology table. Your friend asked you, with a snigger, would you ever date her? You looked at me, wistfully and whispered…yes. Ever since that day, I have never forgotten that smile or your answer to what was clearly a scathing joke. And for the first time in my young life, I fell. I fell for you so hard.

I became obsessed with you. You where always so happy, constantly making everyone around you laugh. I was captivated by your energy. By the way you constantly defended me against my bullies and people who wished me harm. I was captivated by those ocean blue eyes, whose icy depth warmed my soul like nothing ever had.

Eventually, after many biology table discussions, we became friends. That friendship blossomed quickly. Your friends became my friends. We started spending all of our time around each other. If I knew you would be somewhere, I made sure that I received an invite, just so I could see you, be around you.

It wasn’t long before I began to catch you, looking at me, from the corner of my eye. You where staring at me now, the same why i’d stared at you. You would wink at me from across the room and smile. You turned up wherever I was. You dropped me messages constantly and you would walk past my desk deliberately, just to stop and talk

You’d fallen for me, the same way I had fallen for you.

We flirted. Eventually, we admitted our feelings.
One night, while we where out with our friends, you kissed me, on a dark and empty street. My first kiss. With you. I could hardly believe it.

You walked me home. I wore your jacket. I took that jacket and slept next to it that night just so I could smell your wonderful smell.

We spent all of our time together. You quickly became my first everything. You where more than just a crush by that point. I was in love with you.

We met each others parents. We had shy, tentative dates in public parks and cheap restaurants, because we where 14 and that’s all we could afford. But it was okay, because we where together and we where in love.

But life started to get in the way after we left school, didn’t it?

She got in the way. Your mother.

She hurt you. I came to visit you at weekends and found with bloody chunks missing from your neck from where she’d drunkenly swiped you with her acrylic nails.

She stopped caring for you after her marriage failed. She neglected you. Abused you.

Understandably, you began to change.
That happy boy, full of hopes and dreams. The boy who made everybody laugh…he disappeared.

She beat that boy out of you. The stress of having to leave home so young because of her behaviour, quit college, find a job to support yourself. It got too much. You became grumpy. Cynical. Pessimistic.

After so long, you no longer cared about life. You projected that disdain on to me. If I found myself succeeding with something, you shot it down. You began to isolate me from my friends. You convinced me to drop out of college in the same way you had when your mum made it too hard for you. If I had male friends, you became controlling and distrustful.

You caged me so that I wouldn’t fly away, because I was the only constant in your life. You where afraid of losing me.

But you stopped caring. You stopped putting in the effort. The days of love letters and chocolates where behind us. We didn’t even kiss anymore. You stopped expressing your love for me. In the end, I felt like your maid, or your carer. I came home from work to clean up after you and do your laundry. You never pulled your weight or cleaned up after yourself, even while you where at home, out of work.

I busted my ass in the pandemic to keep a roof over our head and put food on the table. I had no money left for myself. And then I had to come home and clean too because you weren’t doing it.

I tried to talk to you about it. You refused to listen to me. Communicating meant arguments. I could no longer speak to you because criticism was not accepted, even if something was effecting my mental health. Instead you treated me like a burden. Manipulated me into believing I was crazy and I turned in on myself. For so long I truly thought I was the issue.

But I found out didnt I??

You’d been cheating on me.

8 years. We’d been together 8 years. I’d stuck by your side. No matter what life threw at us. No matter what YOU threw at me. I was always there, to comfort you and take care of you. I supported you. I spent 18 months keeping us alive while you where out of work and depressed.

And you cheated on me.

Reading those messages. It hurt. You may as well have ripped my heart out and stomped all over it. I loved you, C. I’d loved you since I was 13 years old. You where high school sweetheart. We had so many plans together. To get married. To have little ones.

You where my best friend.

But I had to let you go. For my own sake. You where toxic. There is a void in your soul, created by your mother, that tells you, you aren’t good enough. I tried to fill that void. But no matter what I did, I could not satisfy its size. I was giving parts of myself away that are not mean’t to be given.

I was no longer me anymore. I too, had become cynical, grumpy and pessimistic. I had forgotten that innocent girl who once stared at you from across the classroom. The girl who dared to dream. I had given her all away.

And yet it was not enough, was it?? Because you still hurt me.

You broke my trust. I wanted to fix things. To rebuild it. I hoped we could move past it. But I couldn’t.

I told you to cut contact. You failed to do that too, as you where still talking to her.

I realised that I would never trust you again. That I would always be anxious. Always paranoid.

I couldn’t live like that.

So I made the choice to put me first.

I split up with you and left.

And I miss you.

I yearn for my floppy haired, blue eyed boy. But he died along time ago. He was never coming back. But he just might, now i’m gone. Maybe he will realised his loss. Maybe he will reappear. I hope so. I hope you can find a way to be happy, C. To leave this new you behind. I want you to take care of yourself again. I want you to live your life. I want you to heal from the trauma you always tried so hard to avoid.

No matter how toxic we became, we had our moments. And I will never forget you. I will never forget the way you made my heart sing.

I love you.
And you will always have a piece of my heart, my darling.

Im sorry I had to hurt you. To leave you. But you’ll never fly if I stay. And neither will I.

It’s time to wake up baby.

All my love, forever

A x