Let's leave aside the VERY unfortunate fact that I am not perfect. I have no interest in being a hypocrite nor pointing out my faults I already am painfully aware of here.
The fucking irony of feeling so loved by a stranger, if 19 year old me can hear me now she'd run for the fucking hills. It is not romantic to feel loved by a stranger, especially when you're aware that you know the fucking person and they were once someone you never saw pulling away from you. It's not exciting to know that they still love you but they're more in love with not being around to show it. Trying to teach me a lesson by making me guess what I did wrong and communicate with myself while you go silent for hours or days isn't love or what fixes things, it's abuse and it is so fucking childish. Expecting me to keep running after you and fighting for you when you can't even be bothered to do the same for me if I ever asked you to—were you ever aware of how selfish that was? To be angry with me for daring to pay attention to others and go after other women (I honestly couldn't have cared less about in the first place) to give them what I wanted to give to you, but you wouldn't come around to receive it from me? To be angry with me for ignoring you right back and acting like you didn't exist in my world to cope with the pain of feeling so unseen by you?
Baby, you give every person Taylor Swift has ever written a song about a run for their money, because what the fuck is wrong with you?
But I said fuck it, I love you! You are a mess, you are rotten but you are so lovely and so human, and you are MY mess and you have loved me at my worst so I will without question love you at your worst. You deserve it that. No matter how angry I've gotten, no matter what you've done, it was so easy for me to forgive and love you anyway. I'd rather fight with you than look for peace in anyone else.
It was also so easy for me to look at myself and feel ugly though. To have anxiety over being myself because I didn't want to be too much for you, since maybe that's what drove you away. Maybe my fears from the start were valid and I was right to be afraid to show you affection and communicate all of my feelings no matter what they were. I was RIGHT to hold back from you. I was so scared of you, I felt that anything I could do would push you away if I wasn't operating from a place of distance and detachment. You'd never talk to me and tell me how you feel or what you were thinking until you blew up and we'd have an argument, or we'd stop speaking and 2-3 months later you'd come back to give me answers. Does that seem healthy to you? Do I still seem like the problem here?
And if that wasn't bad enough, I dropped everything and worked harder than I never have just to travel across an ocean and be near you. I couldn't tell you I did it all for you, to hunt you down and show you why you shouldn't have no faith in me, to show you that I'd do anything just to have you, that I want so badly to breathe the same air that you breathe and I'm hoping you feel the same way. I couldn't tell you I wanted us to be closer and I want us to be good again. Why? You never made space for me to. Still, I felt so unseen by you, like this nuisance you just couldn't get rid of. Instead, you found a way to be angry with me again and blame me for your silence, like I was the reason we weren't talking. But then we saw each other in person for the first time the very next day and I never wanted to leave, it was like none of the bad shit ever existed and all of the struggle was infinitely worth it. We understood each other and speaking was suddenly so easy again. Everything was easy again.
Until the train ride home, I was overcome with a dreadful sadness. Like my soul knew that'd be the last time I'd ever see you. That's what it felt like. Sure, you were happy to see me. But how happy? I was in your city and the you I knew back then would've made it such a huge deal, you wouldn't have left me alone, you wouldn't have been so nonchalant or still so distant with me. Nothing changed after our first meeting like I hoped. I was scared I wasn't important to you in that way anymore. I was scared that I could never truly feel safe you with you ever again or ask you for a final time to at least try and give me that after I've communicated these concerns to you so many times but was left without a response. So this time I did what I thought you wanted and pulled away from you, hoping that you'd need me back and you'd cling to me as desperately as I was clinging to you.
What a fool I was. Not another word from you, no communication as usual, you just left. Not for hours or days or a few weeks, no you left me alone in your city like I was never there in the first place and so effortlessly shut me out like I never existed...for nine whole months. Like we weren't a big dream we both shared together with a whole future ahead of us. I hate how easy you made that. I wished I could do exactly what you did.
I wish I never reached out and we didn't speak to each other like our last encounter wasn't deeply traumatising to me. I wish YOU were the one to reach out to ME to tell me exactly how you feel, no bullshit or holding back, just honesty and pure vulnerability. I wish you didn't tell me you missed me and thought about me often while I was up so many nights in tears over the fact that I was fading away, wondering why you hated me so much. I wish I didn't look at you now and see nothing but somebody I used to know, or feel like we never even happened and it was just one really long dream I forgot to wake up from. I see you now and I don't recognise you.
I see a liar. I see a coward, a hypocrite, a lesson, someone to be ashamed of. I see a waste of time. To even say those things about you hurts—it feels like self hatred to hate you. And I don't hate you, not even a little bit. It amazes me how I still understand and love you dearly. But I love me more, I respect me more, and none of that means I'm still in love with you. I'm just angry. Every now and then I remember you and feel so much anger over the fact that the door is still open and nothing was resolved because you refuse to give this a proper ending. Angry that a love so big like that between two people could be reduced to what it is now and become this dirty thing you'd bury at the bottom of the ocean so that we won't dig it up and no one can find out it ever existed.
That's okay though. Life goes on and sometimes questions remain unanswered, things are left open ended. The denial goes away. Truly, I hope that it stays this way and you don't come back ever again. I am not a revolving door. Please remain a memory that is slowly but surely fading away overtime until it is permanent. Please remain a ghost but one that doesn't haunt me. I wanted you to be the love of my life so bad, now I'm glad you won't be. Although I'll still feel you and won't forget we share the same soul, it ends there. I won't remember your face, your voice, your nature, your touch, not even your laugh. I won't remember the joy I once felt with you, and I won't bother to. So don't you ever do me the disservice of reminding me.
~Sincerely, fucking tired.
YOU ARE READING
Du Trésor au Fantôme
Non-FictionA collection of letters I can't say to a living ghost-therefore, literature. This is just me venting, y'all don't gotta read it if y'all don't want to.