Dear XXXXXX,
I started dating someone recently. We've known each other for a while as acquaintances, but we really kicked it off a few months ago. He goes to college upstate. I rarely get to see him. But we text everyday, and he calls me when he has time. I recently started having stronger feelings towards him. we tell each other we love each other.
I'm sure you're wondering why, of all the things i could tell you after not talking to you for years, i would tell you about the possibility of being in love with someone, of whom i'm not even telling you the name.
Remember when we first started dating? We became good friends over MySpace. We hardly ever saw each other but we talked over AIM quite often. Sometimes i felt like you might not even be real. Still, after a while, we told each other we loved each other. But at first, i wasn't entirely certain of it. I had to fight with myself to really know that i loved you.
I am fighting with myself over whether i really love this person in my life. It keeps me up at night. I want to love him. I care about him. I want him to be in my life. But i'm terrified.
Tonight, i was mulling over everything in my head. All the people i have loved. All the people i haven't. I thought about people i pissed off, and people i never should have dated.
And i thought about you, as i often do.
I thought about how much i think about you. Up until more recently, i've thought about you everyday. I wonder how you are, or where you are.
Around a year ago, i had a dream. I was at your parents house. Maybe they don't live there any more, but the one you lived in in high school. They were in the downstairs living room. The one closest to the front door. I asked where you were. They didn't look at me, they didn't say a word. They just pointed up. I climbed the stairs and found a large assortment of beautiful things you had made: sculptures, paintings, carvings. Your sister was there. She looked at me and said "You know, no one in this house really likes you, but i appreciate what you did" and hugged me.
I think about that all the time.
I remember how mad you got at me for telling Paige that dating you it wouldn't be easy; that you had a lot of problems to work through. I had become friends with her because i wanted to make sure she was good enough for you.
I remember seeing you after school one day. You were crying. She had her arm around you and was comforting you. All i could think was "I hope she is strong enough. I hope she can be there for him like i couldn't"
After i stopped dating you i started drinking and smoking again.
I dated a guy at the end of high school that was crazy; low self esteem, self medicated, had a lot of social anxiety. He loved me. I tried loving him but i never ended up being able to. I broke up with him because i couldn't lie to him or myself anymore after i realized the only reason i liked him was because he reminded me of you.
After that I spent some time smoking pot, and when that got old i started taking classes at Palomar. I didn't want to date anymore. I felt broken. I had casual hook ups and short lived relationships for a while. A year later i met a guy who i fell in love with. He was exciting, and adventurous and emotionally unavailable. He had been in and out of Aurora Behavioral Health a few times as a teenager. Now he was a golfer, an incredibly bright, intellectual person, and an alcoholic. He was going to move for college far away under a scholarship, and i had fallen in love with him. We talked about everything together. He told me when he moved he would fly me out to visit. Before he left he stopped contacting me. Everything he had said to me, all the care he showed for me was all a lie. He broke my heart.
Last year, I graduated from a dental assisting program. I moved downtown with my sister and tried finding a job. I had no luck, and fell into a deep depression. I wasn't eating enough, and my sister was stressing me out. I ended up moving back to my dad's and broke out in full body hives from stress and a low immune system. It was the first time i had broken out in a full body rash since we broke up all those years ago. I've been dealing with weird health issues since. I've only recently gotten better at eating more regularly. I rarely drink. I almost never smoke. I hardly hangout with people anymore; most of them are selfish and the rest drink too much.
My head and my heart and my stomach are still in knots.
This guy, the one i think i love, has never been in a mental hospital. He doesn't drink that much. He doesn't like smoking pot. He's nice to me, he cares about my wellbeing, and i can talk to him about anything. His family is healthy and he has insecurities about social interaction because he was mostly home-schooled. He's wonderful, lovely, and handsome. Yet i can't fully love him.
Sometimes i think about where i would be if i had never asked you if we could take a break. How long would you have strung me along? I know it was just an easy out for you. I know you didn't love me anymore. I was crazy. I often feel like i still am and that maybe that part of me will never change.
But i still loved you.
Sometimes i know i still do.
I don't want to.
Sometimes i wish i never had.
But i forgave you for everything. I still forgive you. And 1,000 times over you are welcome for whatever, if any, good i did.
I didn't do it for me. I wanted to help you. I wanted to see you get better.
I cared about you, and loved you.
But you did the same for me.
I had a problem too.
I still do. I struggle with it everyday.
I have no self worth. I rarely see a reason to be alive, to stay healthy and to take care of myself. I thought i spent my years as a teenager focusing on other people to help them. Which is true. But i also did it so i didn't have to focus on myself.
I have been this way my whole life.
And you could never fix me. How could two people, so broken, ever stay together?
so i worry.
I worry that, even with this wonderful person, i am still going to be terrible to myself. That he is going to get sick of me. Or i am gong to get sick of the me i have let myself become.
I worry that after all these years, it wasn't you that broke up with me, it wasn't you that broke my heart. It was me that broke my own. I stopped thinking for myself, and i allowed myself to be blind and my perception to skew however it pleased, like a fish on a line that i never reeled in. I lost control of the wheel and i wanted someone to step in and help me steer like i had done for everyone else, because i didn't want to deal with my problems; who does?
So i'm sorry. Im sorry for being a burden. I never meant to cause you pain. I loved you too much to want that.
But through everything, i keep looking back at the beginning, because i reminds me of what went wrong. It helps keep myself from making the same mistakes again. So i thank you. For putting up with me. For letting me fuck everything up and rip my own heart out, because, now, i realize, i have always been the problem. And it will never be worth loving someone else if i can never truly love, but more importantly, take care of, myself.
i wish you all the best in what life brings you. I'm sorry even now for making this about me. I'm a selfish person and it's something i am trying to change. It's hard to become something better than myself. Looking back always puts things into perspective, and I can now see how much pain you were in and how hard it was for you to do what you do and make the progress you did in the time i knew you. I hope i am not looked back on as a regret. I want you to know that i am sincerely happy to have helped you through a difficult time of your life, that i always meant well, and that part of me will always love you, for whatever it means.
XXXXXXXX
