So I realized that this fall will be 10 years since you broke up with me for good. You did it in the middle of the school day, after break, on that bench near where we’d always leave our bags. I had to go to class right after that. And then, just days later, I found out you were dating my good friend. I screamed and cried and had so much trouble getting over it because every single day at school, there you two were. I had to lose friends to put the distance I needed between us. And I really wondered how I’d get over you. 

It hurt so much. The class was too small to avoid you like I wanted to. This honestly ruined my senior year. Did you know that? And yet, I was the one to apologize to you. I don’t know why I did. 

It’s been nearly 10 years and so much has changed I don’t even know where to start. I came out as bi and genderfluid. I moved out on my own. I’m aiming to go to law school next fall. I have a small group of friends that make me happy. I’ve discovered hobbies I never had time or energy for in high school—video games and cosplay came into my life and now they mean everything to me. I adopted pets. 

I’m dating an amazing, ambitious, determined, hilarious, sweet person. They make me feel young again—I wear their sweater to sleep, we kiss in the rain and under streetlights and on the sidewalk, we stay up late and giggle and fall asleep in each other’s arms. I feel so lucky to have them in my life and to be in theirs. They’re several states away but we’re making it work. We looked at houses on Zillow last night and next month, we’re hitting up a convention together. 

I wonder if you would recognize the person I am now. I wonder how much you’ve changed too. I wonder if you know exactly how many songs and poems I wrote for you back then, and if you know exactly how our breakups affected me. If wonder if you, like I, outgrew the conservativism we inherited from our parents, and if you have someone new too, that makes you as happy as my partner makes me. 

I used to think I’d never get over you. Now I know that I could, and that I did.