A letter from May 03, 2023

You definitely don’t deserve this annoyingly long but very well-written response. If I’m being humble, it’s probably the best response ever written by anyone ever. You especially don’t deserve it in response to “hey” (seriously?). But it helped give me something I never fully got from you, closure. Maybe it’ll give you closure too if you read it. Maybe you won’t ever read it. I don’t know and quite frankly I’m tired of obsessing over if you’ve read something or not. I used to feel like I would die without you. Okay I know that’s melodramatic. It’s a hyperbole. I didn’t think I would literally die but there were definitely times during the darkest, most painful days when I felt sick from missing you that I really had to white knuckle it. In the middle of the night I would be stabbed by the thought of you. Of us. I would think of all I had lost. No more good morning texts from you. I’d turn over on my side, away from my husband and quietly weep to myself. I sent messages into the dark waiting for a response that I fervently believed would cure me, knowing full well I’d get nothing but silence in return. When you’re in agony, you’ll do anything to ease the pain. Everything hurt, it hurt to walk to the library. To be reminded of that amazing conversation we had right before this started to crumble (again). I would miss the anatomical hearts and sending you selfies. I would miss your attention and hearing your voice. I would miss those days of basking in the warmth of how good it felt to be in love with you. Missing you took up an immense amount of space. I used to want your lungs to stop working without me. I wanted you to feel like you would die without me. I wanted to be your cure. I wanted you to be miserable because I was miserable. All I wanted was you. Was us. I felt stuck. Waiting. Searching. Then I got what I thought I wanted. A pebble tossed across a pond. A simple “hey.” At first I felt elated and vindicated seeing that after all this time, despite your best efforts to shove me into the shadows, you still wanted me. You also missed the hearts and selfies. My attention and my voice. The past few days of waiting to see if you’ll actually respond to me after you went a month unanswered have been so essentially you and so essentially me. So essentially us. I don’t miss this. The knots in my stomach. The chaos of the undertow. The feeling that you would slip away if I made one misstep. If I held on too tight or not tight enough. I watched it happen over and over again. For years, this pattern. The scorpion and the frog. I had told you at the start of this, our most recent era, how I thought it would end and that I didn’t want that. I didn’t want you to disappear but then you did. You became a ghost and our relationship has haunted me ever since. I used to be desperate to get back to you. To get back to us. But our relationship is over Zack. You knowingly ended it. It was a well-informed, rational decision on your part but, and I hate to say this, really hate to admit it wasn’t easy for me, I never took it on the chin. Never cut my losses. When you ended this thing we have, it shattered me. I convinced myself I was some sort of addict, going to 12-step meetings and retreats. Trying to take on an identity that wasn’t mine, wear a skin that never fit. I was looking for comfort, for an explanation to ease how devastatingly heart broken I was. I wanted to be surrounded by other broken people. For months I dreamed of you. Of us. All I wanted was you. Was us. Now I know that after years of the undercurrent pulling me into the sea and crashing me against the rocks, this is the end. I’m over you. I know I’m over you because I’m not religiously checking Instagram to see if you’ve read or responded to the message I sent, not getting derailed by your reappearance like I used to. I know I’m over you because I don’t want your lungs to stop working without me. I don’t have some grand revenge fantasy or scheme to get you back. All I want is tranquility. No more riptides. No more stomach knots. I don’t want to be broken. I want to be healthy. I want to be content. I want you to be healthy. I want you to be content. I want you to find someone who loves you, who gets you, who you can spend your life with. As time marches on we’ll be nothing more than faded memories in a shoebox shoved under the bed. A forgotten favorite sweater that unraveled a long time ago (getting carried away with the metaphors here. In my defense I was a creative writing major in college). I sincerely hope you’ll think of me when you hear an 80s song in the grocery store and you’ll remember me as someone who once loved you. And I’ll think of you when I hear someone say “aye yai yai yai” and I’ll remember you as someone who, despite your hesitancy to use the **** word, once loved me. I wish this thing we had ended differently. I wish we met in real life and under different circumstances. I wish we could have really seen what it would have been like without the barriers that made it impossible to know. We had something real, an insane, intoxicating, chemistry that we both know can never be replicated. We had lightning in a bottle. I’ve accepted that I will never find that again. I’ve accepted that what I felt for you was love, not addiction or limerence but a fiery, intense, crazy making love. I’ve accepted that part of me will always miss you. Will always miss us. I’d be lying if I said I won’t sometimes look for you in the corners of the internet. But I’ve also accepted that this thing between us is over. I wish it was different but it isn't so. Sorry for the bad stuff, never sorry for the good stuff. Especially not sorry for teasing you.