Here’s the thing.

You were never nobody. I know you’ve always felt that way. It’s come out pretty hard in this past few years, after we moved back to the city. The jealousy, the resentment, you acted with only survival and 10 more minutes on your mind. I guess I told myself if I just loved you enough, maybe you’d be able to love yourself too, but it frightened me to watch all my love disappear into the black hole of your self loathing, to watch you stop taking care of yourself and hide. I suppose I knew it was going to end about two years ago, when I stopped being able to tell myself that you were the man I wanted to marry. I didn’t stop loving you—I’ll never stop loving you, it comes as easily as breathing—but I knew. I was just slow to give up.


You always had a hard time coming home to me, I keep trying to tell myself it wasn’t because I wasn’t beautiful, it wasn’t because I wasn’t everything you wanted, it was because you couldn’t handle me loving you when you didn’t love yourself. I feel like you almost hated me for how much I adored you, but would panic whenever you felt my adoration waning because how would you feel loved if I wasn’t there? And when I wasn't there...

You will always miss me. You will never meet another woman like me, and you will likely never feel this way about anyone again. You will feel other ways, and you may fall in love again—you may find happiness if you’re willing to work for it—but a part of your heart will always belong to me, a part that I know you will always take great pride in.

These are the things I keep telling myself.

I’m past regretting you, and have moved on to licking my wounds and trying to exist without the opiate feelings of companionship and understanding that I used to have with you. My hope, the one I told you about on the phone, is that we could be friends someday, dig out and salvage the amazing part of us after the pain has gone away. I’m just trying to put as much time as possible between who I am and who we were, and to believe that I am an amazing individual who deserves what I want. I just hope that when I’m ready to know you again, you won't be a hollow, haunted man anymore.

Like I said, I never wanted to change you, I just wanted you to be who you were rather than a product of painful memories.