The Unsaid Thoughts of the Ones Who Are Hurting

I Can't Let Go

They tell me I need to let you go. They say that forgetting you, no, not forgetting you, forgetting us, will help me enjoy life again. They think that I will be able to move on and find someone new and then I will just be able to get over us. But how could I ever possibly hope to get over us? We were best friends and we were in love. We were always so happy together no matter what we were going through. We could tell each other anything and everything without being scared that we would be judged. We did everything together that we possibly could and made countless happy memories that we were supposed to cherish together for the rest of our lives. You made me the happiest I had ever been and helped me to become the best person I could've ever hoped to have become. With you, I was finally able to be truly and endlessly happy. But, something happened. I don't know what and I don't think I could ever understand why, but your feelings about me changed somewhere along the line. At first you just hid it from me and played along as though everything was normal. I knew it wasn't but you never wanted to talk about it so maybe you were hoping it would leave if you never brought it up. Or, maybe I was the one too scared to finally confront you and tell you that we needed to talk about whatever was bothering you. I hated seeing you not happy, but I didn't want to push the issue because I didn't want you to lose any more happiness than you already had. I did everything I could other than talk about it to make you feel better though. I did my best to go out with you more, to spend every possible waking moment with you in the hopes of cheering you up. What went wrong with us? What was the cause of you no longer being in love with me? I always ask these questions and my friends always give me the same answers, "He wasn't good enough for you anyway," "He isn't worth your tears," and, "Once you move on and forget him you'll see that your whole life was really changed for the better." The thing is, they're wrong. You were good enough for me, in fact, I could never have wished for better. And my tears, well, it was worth crying over anything bad that happened to you while we were together, so how is it any different now? Next, well, there's the fact that you were the only one who made my life actually something that I wanted to live to begin with, so how, then, can I just forget everything that made my life so that I didn't wish I was dead? You were everything to me. They don't seem to get it, but you were my life, you were the thing that had changed my life for the better, but, now that you've told me you don't feel the same anymore, now that you tore everything I knew about happiness apart, you have somehow changed my life for the worse. I know you didn't mean to do it. I understand that you thought you were doing what was best because you thought I would be better off if I wasn't with someone who doesn't love me. The only problem is, now I have to try to move on and be happy without my source of happiness. I can't just move past us. There is too much happiness in the memories from then. And I can't find a way to be happy without thinking of you, so I don't know if I will ever be able to be happy again.

- Jess