A Letter to a Former Lover

the first letter

Dear Lover,

I thought I didn't know you. I thought I had spent two years with someone and had never truly gotten to know them. But then, driving around town, I realized that I do know you. We were close. I knew all the small, mundane things that you learn about a person when you fall in love. I know your mom's electric blue, convertible Mini Cooper. I know your family drives the red Nissan Armada. I know your father keeps that feather in the little white Ford truck, but I will not say why because I know how personal it is to him. But I do know why. I know you love your mother's cooking. I know you inherited that passion from her. I know that the kids in your family do the dishes while your mom winds down and your dad smokes a cigarette outside. I know the layout of your houses, the old and the new. I know your parents' address. I know where your grandparents live. I know your sister got her cosmetology license, she specializes in waxing, and she moved to San Francisco. I know your dogs' names. I know your family is competitive. I know your father loves your mother more than anyone in this world, and he has moved mountains for her. I remember looking at them once and picturing us like that. But I also remember the day I realized that would never be us.

Because for everything I do know, there is something else I don't.

I know when your sister moved away, you took her old apartment. But I do not know that address. You moved out in a hurry. I used to know why, or I thought I did. You wanted to get away from your family. You wanted to be on your own, to escape your mother's watchful eyes and the harsh disappointment in your father's eyes that you knew would be there when he found out. But you wanted her. You wanted her above all of that. So, you moved out under a blanket of a thousand excuses. You weren't able to be honest with yourself. You couldn't admit that the only thing you wanted more than her in your bed was me on your arm. As much as you needed to know her, be with her, have her be yours and mark her as such in every intimate way you could, you knew all the time that you did not love her. That you will never love her like you loved me.

Maybe it'll overpower what you felt for me someday, be the strongest love ever. She'll be your everythning and you'll move mountains for her. But you'll never love her the way that you loved me. You'll never feel that again. The joy that you kept saying filled your heart, she won't bring that. The excitement, the newness, the freedom while sneaking around. The dances. Your friends. My friends. The life that we twisted and bent to accommodate each other into. But that's just it.

The life.

The life we built. Singular.

That is not how love works. We should not build one life to accommodate each other. But we did. We were young, 14 and 16, and as we grew up, we grew away from that life. From each other. Because what you want from love, what your father has, what you grew up with, it is not what I grew up with and it is not what I want. I do not want to bend and twist around you like a little vine on a stationary post. I want to grow up and up, like Jack's beanstalk, and from there I want to lean toward another. I want to be trees that form a tunnel. I want to create a space where I can live next to and grow beside another. Where we intertwine separate lives. I want my college roommates to remind my lover of my favorite restaurant. I want my girls to throw me a surprise party. I want the love of my life to tell the doctors to call my best friend for detailed specifics. I want my little sister to plan my funeral. I want my life to extend to everyone, to spread the love I hold in my heart among everyone I want to share it with. And this will never make sense to you because eventually you put me even before your best friend in the world, the one you call your brother. Whatever I may have told you to satiate your toxically possessive behaviors, you never took that spot away from my best friend. You never had it, and there was a reason for that. Yes, I want to be in love. I want to grow old with someone and I want to have a family and children and things that are only between us. Why else would you think I haven't written about our most intimate whispered moments? I want a lover where we have a close relationship, a private one, but I need it to not be the only close relationship in my life. The minute I started to build that, you ran for someone else who was so desperate to be loved that she took you and all the burdens of the kind of love you want. I was her, once, but I was 14, not 18. And once you were gone, I realized how heavily I had denied myself that happiness. How much I hid from my friends so that I could keep lying to myself about the truth.

At 14, I fell in love with you.

At 15, I gave myself to you completely, as you did me, and we had never shared that with anyone else.

At 16, I fought for you, fought to stay by your side, and loved you with every ounce of my being.

When I turned 17, you didn't buy me a present. You were annoyed when our phone call was cut short because I was out of town and had plans with my family anf friends that I rarely get to see. You were jealous that my time was not devoted to you.

At 17, I realized why I was falling out of love with you. At 17, someone I love like a brother but pushed away for you found a picture on social media. At 17 years old, one of my best friends gave me the call I never expected to receive. At 17 years old, I realized that at some point over the last two years and four months, I had found self-respect. And so, at 17 years old, I did the thing I wasn't capable of a mere few months previously.

I broke your heart.

I thought at that moment I broke mine, too. But my heart had been broken. I was watching you manipulate me, lie to me and cheat me. Not for the entire two years, I know that. But for months and months, a logical version of myself sat in a cage in my mind, screaming at me and banging on the walls, desperately trying to break out. It wasn't until I saw those photos that the lovesick version of myself, a 14-year-old me, climbed up from my heart to unlock the cage in my mind. She took off her rose colored glasses, hugged my older self, then slowly dissipated into sweet memories to be locked away until I was ready to face them. As she said her goodbye, I felt all the love for you drain from my body. It was like a bathtub. It got too full, so the backup drain began lowering the water level. The whole time, water was seeping out the drain because you can't stop water without an airtight seal. Eventually, the water got cold and the bubbles had all popped. I pulled the drain, watched you wash away, and dried the last few droplets from my skin and hair. I pulled on a hoodie and laid in bed to get warm again. I let myself cry and scream and mourn, then I made myself drink water and go to sleep. When I woke up, you were gone, and everyone I love, even the ones I had pushed away, stood at the foot of my bed, waiting and ready to help me through it.

I am not through it. Some nights, I'm still cold. Sometimes I sit on the floor of the shower until all the hot water is gone. Sometimes I sit alone. Sometimes someone sits with me. But every day, I wake up a little warmer. I wake up with more of you washed away.

So many of the songs talk about not knowing their former lover, or about not being enough-- they blame themselves.

"I could take you back but people don't ever change."

"All I ever wanted was to be enough for you."

"So I never really knew you / God, I really tried to"

"Realize how much I need you"

"I don't love you anymore / A pretty line that I adore / Five words that I've heard before"

And it's ok. It's ok to feel that way for a while. Confused, hurt, lonely, heartbroken. But eventually, the song ends and another one begins. Then the playlist is done and something random plays. Your tears dry, you stand up, stretch. Look in the mirror. Miss them.

It took me forever to accept that I will miss you. An old version of you, one that I adored when I was 14. One that I couldn't get enough of at 15. One that slowly started to disappear when I was 16.

And I'll forever be grateful for the version of you that I finally saw at 17. You made me see myself, really see myself. See my own self worth. See that I am worth more than whatever you make me out to be.

I am a whole person.

I am not complete, because I'm 17.

But I am growing. No one makes me feel bad for growing, now.

I am getting to know myself. Myself, without you.

And she is so excited to be free, to explore this messy world, and to keep growing every day.

So, despite everything, thank you. Thank you for making me set myself free. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to have experienced true love, but be able to now experience true happiness. Because I was never going to have both with you.

With no love at all,

Your former lover