Sometimes I think I miss you and that it would make everything better if I just had you back. I know that’s not really true, I know that what I really want isn’t to have you back, but to have you be a different person than you are. I wish that you actually were the person I thought I was dating, the honest southern southern gentlemen you pretended to be. I thought because you opened doors and gave me compliments about how beautiful my eyes were that I could make conclusions about you character. But all the empty compliments in the world won’t build the character you don’t have and the respect that you lack for women and yourself.

I also wish I hadn’t told myself to dismiss all those little things you said and did, those things that said this isn’t the guy for you. I guess I always knew this wasn’t forever, I knew that deep down we were fundamentally different in the way we approach life. You were always blaming the rest of the world for the things you didn’t accomplish in your own life, your parents didn’t treat you fairly, your ex-girlfriends were crazy bitches and nobody would give you a hand up to follow your dreams of photography. I’d try in small little doses to remind you that nobody owes you anything, that life is what you make out of it, but I knew those words went in one ear and out the other. I wish I had been more concerned by this. You painted the world with this negativity that is so contrary to my character that maybe I thought I could save you from your own poisoning pessimism. That nobody every changes somebody is a lesson I learned a long time ago, and it was folly for me to entertain the notion in the first place.

I’m a recovering addict and you smoked pot every day, morning, afternoon and night and when you had a chance in between. Pot’s legal where we live and there’s such a culture of apathy towards it here and I certainly don’t judge people for smoking. I never quite put it into solid words/thoughts while we were dating, but don’t you understand that being high all the time means you have an addiction? That you aren’t dealing with the world the way it really is. I get it, when your stoned nothing seems like a big deal. Its much easier to pretend someone is being a needy/crazy bitch when they have real-world expectations of you instead of recognizing they have a valid perspective that might differ from your own. I think you’ve been high for so long that you’ve forgotten what it feels like to really feel something. And therein lies one of our other major flaws as a couple, I was really there and present, but you were behind a literal smoke screen, going through the motions at a distance. I think if you ever stop smoking dealing with the world will be a very confusing and painful experience for you, and I guess that’s why you don’t quit.

What hurt me, more than anything, more than anyone has ever before, is that I believed, partly due to my own mistakes, that you were a better man. At the end of the day, all I wanted was for you to actually end our relationship, but you disappeared! You let me send messages and leave voice mails apologizing… thinking the demise of our relationship was my fault, but in reality you had checked out and were already on a trip with a different girl. And its not even that you cheated that really kills me, as difficult as it may be, I can understand that sometimes we might meet someone else that fits into our lives better. It was that you had so little regard for me that you couldn’t have a difficult conversation, even when it was the right thing to do. That little nuance right there, is what colors everything I felt and thought about you. It’s what made me realize you were a coward, an emotionally handicapped man-boy, someone so out of touch with humanity that an inconvenience to themselves was a good enough reason for them to cause true suffering in another person’s life, a person they had claimed to care about. I know I was wrong to feel this way, but back then a I felt truly ugly and of less value because of the way you treated me. I kept thinking, how can I matter this little to another being, I kept thinking about how I could never treat another person in that way and that for you to do that I must be less than human in your eyes. I wonder sometimes if you feel bad, if you regret in any real way what you did to me. I hope that you do, at least then I wasn’t entirely wrong about who you are. I hope that even if you can never have enough presence and reflection on this situation that you apologize to me, you learn some kind of lesson out of this. I don’t want anyone to ever feel the way I did as a result of you again.

Part of what’s been so hard about this is that I fundamentally believe in the goodness of people and I’ve struggled to see what’s good in you since you disappeared out of my life. I’ve struggled with the notion that I never really knew a thing about you and all the positive traits I saw in you were part of a grand act of deception on your part. I have struggled to believe that underneath what you’ve done, you are still a decent human being. I have never been fond of considering another person to be bad or cruel, I’ve always felt that people just get so mixed up in their own world and problems that they make bad choices and do hurtful things to others. It’s hard for me to extend that belief to you because the pain you caused feels so personal. What is best for me is to remember that none of what you did had anything to do with me and everything to do with you. The fact that you feel no remorse or even if you do and simply can’t own it, is a much, much bigger problem for you than it will ever be for me. It is fatal flaw that will follow you through life and infect every relationship you have with other human beings. I am lucky to have been separated from you before your faults permeated my own life. Remembering that is one of the few things that helped me to let go of my sadness and anger.

Still there are things I wish sometimes. I wish the man I thought I loved was real. I wish that you had had some small sense of decency that let you have a 5 minute conversation to end our relationship. I wish that I had known better or been more honest with myself. I wish that I didn’t hurt over the actions of a less than worthy man. I wish that the lessons I learned in this relationship are some that I never have to revisit. I wish for the day when I will look back on what happened with you and understand exactly why it had to happen. I wish for myself all the things a relationship with you would have never given me.

I promise that I will never tell myself again it’s okay to feel less important or to shift my life to accommodate another human being, because I love him so much. That is not love. Love is something you build with another person and its made of stones with names like respect, commitment, honesty, gratitude, humility and selflessness. It is something that only real people with genuine intentions can build, it was something that I realize now, we could have never built together. I’m going to promise to myself that after writing these things, I won’t let you make me sad or angry or wishful. I will put the story of you and I to bed, holding onto it only does a disservice to me at this point and gives you a place within my soul that you never deserved.