Split Sides

A Letter to Hayley - I Love You But I'm Lost

This chapter has been added and edited for clarity and posterity.

Dear Hayley,

This is the hardest, most gutwrenching, and most heartbreaking letter I've ever written in my life. I recognise the gravity these words I'm about to tell you will mean for both of us, and I'm not gonna escape them nor deny them. I will take responsibility for this decision, and I shall live with the consequences of this for years to come. This decision hasn't been easy to accept, let alone do, as this will crush the both of us and remain a permanent scar on our lives forever. Nevertheless, I've had to face facts and see this unyielding stalemate for what it is, and make the most of it. So brace yourself, for my next words will sting you without end.

Hayley, I want to start by saying I wouldn't be alive and breathing right now if you never came into my life. This is no exaggeration or flattery, this is fact. Clear, plain, and simple. You entered my life in a crucial phase of it, when I was leaving my first college, and then entering and departing my second. You consoled and guided me through my first heartbreak, gave me company as I started my haphazard steps into adult life and short-term employment (twice), and kept my hopes and faith up during those empty nights and testy days. You inspired me, gave me confidence, saw through my flaws and failures, supported my fantastical dreams and ambitions, and trusted me to do the same for you. And you were brave enough and honest enough and strong enough to trust me with your darkest secrets, your tempestuous emotions, and your longings for affection. But most of all, you loved me in my nadir, Hayley. You loved me at a point when I couldn't even love myself, and against all odds your love fixed me and got me working again. Not completely and not wholly, but just working in a tolerable condition. So believe me when I say you have given me my life back, and a taste of romance and happiness I never thought I would ever reach. For this you have earned my eternal gratitude.

But the utter devotion and love we held each other with could never bring down the obstacles that continually beset us. We conducted a long-distance relationship an ocean apart when we have never even known about the other's location, much less had a video call together to reinforce that bond. We always had problems with money and physical friends and support to help us bridge the gap, and we had to conduct our relationship without our families' knowledge or contact. And honestly, the biggest challenge between us was that our contact with one another relied on factors beyond our control, like time and availability and privacy. These vicissitudes of circumstance always affected the quality of our relationship. And one day, they proved far too much to handle.

I still remember it like it was yesterday. We were teasing one another on who loves the other more, and I was gonna tell you that I was overfilled with so much love for you, when you said you had to go because it could be your overbearing parents coming to put pause on our conversation. So you said you love me so much and that you'll talk to me again when you have the chance. That was Friday, 3 August 2018. That was the last time we ever spoke. And since that day it has been 3 bleak, soulless, fruitless, and torturous years for my mental, emotional, and psychological well-being. Three years, Hayley. Three long years I spent that I'll never get back, looking and searching and finding you using every means available to me, to no avail. Google shows that your name doesn't exist, Facebook has no record of you, and birth record databases aren't open to me unless I'm an American citizen and can pay the required amount, in a price that's simply unreachable for someone from the Third World like me. I have no more paths open for me to find you, and you remain as distant and aloof as ever, as if some higher omnipotent being is teasing and bullying me by holding you like a doll and keeping it just out of reach from my desperate, lovesick hands. 

I'm so sorry but I have nowhere else to go. My world is small, my options practically nonexistent. I hate that I sound like I'm giving up but that's what this is, and the fact that my eyes are red and wet and my throat is hitching when I say these words should give you a sense of just how untenable my position has become. I keep working and hoping against hope that you'll come back but you never did, and I've had to deny my heartbreak by ignoring it. But I can ignore it no longer because this endless strife and misery is turning me bitter and depressed and it's bringing me back to those awful, emotionally devoid years back in college. It's poisoning me from the inside and it's just taken too much out of me. Hayley, I love you but I'm lost, I really am. I'm so close to losing it and I need to leave you for now before it does me in.

Hayley, I need to let you go for now. I have to face my fears and my losing you and see that time waits for no man, no matter how much he loves something and someone. I know how much this is hurting you as much as it hurts me, but if I don't give myself some time to heal and grow, I'm finished. I have to do this. I don't want to but I need to, if I'm to survive and live a life of potential and love and accomplishment. As much as it fills me with distaste saying this, the pandemic has enabled me to see things clearly, and allowed me to know what my priorities are and where my focus should be. I know what I want now.

Hayley, I'm 25 years of age and I have my whole life ahead of me, and I'm too young to spend it being filled with self-hatred and regret over a romance that has been suspended indefinitely. I need to spend my life on what matters, and what matters is that I want to live and experiment and experience life the way I should live, not the way I wish to live. I need to see someone new, to love someone else, and know what I've been missing on in my adolescence and the first half-decade of my 20s. Basically, I want to live my potential and fulfill all the dreams and plans I have for myself.

Now that I've made my choice and my motivations clear, I just want to tell you something. Remember that promise we made to each other? You said you'll never let go and leave me. You said you'll find me and you'll get me out of this cursed land so we can build a future and a life together, and you'll do them all not just because I promised you I'd kick all the fuckers and savages who've hurt you to the sun, and not just because I promised to do the same for you and help you build your life back. You said you'd do it because I deserve so much more than I get, and it upsets you that it's not the case. And you also said you deeply care too much about me. Hayley, I don't know what happened to you, why you vanished, and if you still love me or not anymore, but I will uphold my end of the bargain. I made a promise, so I'll keep it and find you wherever you may be, whatever it takes. I will learn what became of you and know why you did what you did and hold you accountable for all the promises you made to me. Even if I'm not in love with you anymore, I'll still do it, if only to know the truth. So that I may close the chapter on this part of my life, and move on with my life. I need the answers to this crucial question so I can finally have peace in my heart, mind, and soul. This way I can say, hand on my heart, that I lived up to my promise to love you and help you and support you, and I did the best I could.

Well Hayley, this is the end of everything. I'll message you again for your birthday and possibly on Christmas, but these are most likely the last messages I'll ever write to you. I will be back to see you again in the future but for now, I must heal and grow and live on my own without you. That way I'll be ready for whatever comes next. This is not goodbye, for I shall return. Good luck and please, take good care of yourself Hayley. I love you.