A final note?

Allys „note"

Dear Larry,

this letter must have come out of the blue for you. You probably haven't thought about me for a long time and have long forgotten me. The problem is that I haven't forgotten you yet. With this letter I want to come the decisive step closer and finally draw a line for me. You have long since drawn a line for yourself with your move to Detroit, but I have still been missing something for this until today.

After we broke up, I forbade anyone to even mention your name. I figured if no one mentioned you, I wouldn't have to think about you either, and that's the quickest way to forget you. Suppression may not be the healthiest method, but it is usually the most efficient. Stupidly, however, it did not work. So I lifted the ban. The thought behind it was that if I talked about you again and let it all out, I could process it all and put it behind me. Well, unfortunately, that didn't work either. The only logical conclusion I can draw from this is that I need to talk WITH you to put everything behind me. What is missing for a closure is a clarifying, a final talk. A real goodbye, if you will. To make sure that I can really get everything off my chest, and also to avoid opening up old wounds any further than absolutely necessary, I'm choosing this letter instead of a face-to-face meeting. This may also put your mind at ease, because hopefully it shows you that I'm not interested in confrontation, but in closure. It is perhaps a bit like your note, only a good deal longer, I suspect.

Yes, I merely suspect it. I haven't read it. Knowing that you wrote me a note was enough to make me realize that our relationship was really over. I knew you well enough to know that without looking it up. And it hurt enough without seeing it in black and white. Maybe I also didn't want to see if you were trying to wrap up the end of our relationship in some nice, comforting words. That would have only made my attempt to get over you with anger that much harder. So I could curse and rant that you left me with a note. A dream come true to the bitter end. What kind of man does that? He must be a pig...at least that's what I thought at first. I wanted to think it so badly. I struggled for a long time with not understanding it. After everything that connected us, how could you just write a note and get out of town? How could you leave not only me, but even Boston without telling me first and especially without explaining? I struggled with these questions for a long time and then, unexpectedly, I had an epiphany.

I was helped by someone who must have had nothing less in mind. Otherwise, the first and so far only attempt at a new relationship would probably not have failed because of this realization of mine. It took me several months until I could even seriously think about dating a man. It wasn't until a wonderful man showed up in my life and crept into my life and trust for weeks that I could try to get involved. This same man, Victor, told me about a breakup he handled similar to how you handled ours. He simply disappeared from his ex-girlfriend's life without a word. Him, however, unlike you, I was able to ask about his motives and he was willing to explain. He wanted to make it easier for his ex-girlfriend to get over him. He was aware that the way he broke up with her was the worst way he could have chosen. But his ulterior motive was that by doing so he was making it possible for her to simply hate him rather than miss him. Anger and hate seemed easier for him to deal with than heartbreak. And when he explained it to me like that, the scales fell from my eyes that it must have been similar with you. I'm sure that wasn't your only motivation, because I know all too well that you can't handle goodbyes or serious or painful emotional conversations, but still. I realized that by impersonally parting with a note, you weren't just trying to make it easier for you to say goodbye. You also wanted to make it easier for me to get over you. You thought I'd be annoyed enough by this kind of breakup to hate you for it instead of mourning you for it. That it would hurt me less and I'd get over you faster. Well, let me tell you this: it's not working!

Not that you misunderstand me: I appreciate your attempt. But it was just an attempt. A futile attempt. The way you left didn't ease my pain, and the fact that I'm writing to you now proves all too clearly that it didn't get me over you. It was more like another wound you inflicted on me. It felt to me as if I were no longer worth the effort of a clarifying conversation to you. As if I had become completely indifferent to you. Ballast to be gotten rid of. But I'm comforted by the realization that your note was a final act of caring that I've always loved about you. The thought that even when it no longer affects you, because you are no longer there, you are trying to help me, has put many negative feelings from the past into perspective. This realization has the effect you wanted to achieve with the note itself and eases the pain at least a little. But let me give you some advice for the future: Don't ever do that again. It might work if you realize after the first few dates that it's not a fit, but we were way too far past that for it to work. Obviously it was different for you than for me, who had actually started to believe in a life together for a while, but at least for a while it was love from your side, too. Not the one true love that is really everything, as you once put it, but a great love. As much bad things as I've thought or talked myself into thinking about you over the last few months, but at least I never doubted that.