Words Left Behind

To the person whom I can’t let go of,

There are things I have wanted to say, well I guess more so needed to say. There are so many unanswered questions, miles of stretched silence that have separated us from the day we informally ended whatever it was we ended. Relationship? Situationship? Friends with benefits? Maybe never defining it, meant in the end we would never need the closure so many formally official couples do. But I, unfortunately, have realized that I do. Although, I am not entirely sure what I expect, as you are supposed to walk down the aisle to your future tomorrow. On what should be the happiest day of your life is quickly becoming my demise. 

I know this letter should have come years ago. Maybe it should never come at all. Maybe I should have just made amends with myself the day I watched you open the door to the apartment, without even bothering to stop to look back at me or close the door. I think you wanted me to witness your departure—the abrupt turn, the trail of shock you left behind.

You know, I can still see it, your face. The way your eyes filled with so much despair, waiting, hoping, I’d say something to capture the emotions that floated between us in the air. It’s also how that day unfolded, all the unspoken words I couldn’t grab and shove into my mouth to say, that still haunt me. It’s how that image, that scene, replays in the darkness behind my eyes every night as I try to fall asleep because you’ve never fully disappeared from my mind.

Closing my eyes, picturing the day you walked away from me comes as natural as breathing. Your brown hair, perfectly waved, fell past your collarbone. The blue sweater intensified the glossiness in your green eyes, betraying your hidden emotions. That face, that moment, wasn’t supposed to be the way I saw you for the last time. 

They say grief is funny, perhaps because I sometimes forget what I’m grieving for, which I guess is why it’s humorous. Is it the fact that I know I will never again get to lay my eyes upon your delicate and radiant face? Is it the fact that I know I will never again get to experience the way your smile ignited a warmth so hot, so deep within me, it had no choice but to escape through my skin? Or is it grief over knowing that I was the one who caused all this?

I know I was the only one you allowed to see all your flaws, all the pieces you tried to keep hidden about yourself. You had meticulously laid them out, making sure they’d fit perfectly connected with mine so we could build our 1,000 piece puzzle. Only you didn’t know I would be the one who would end up removing my pieces first. And maybe that’s why grief handed me my punishment. 

A punishment that some days comes in waves: powerful, hurricane-generated waves. While some days I feel nothing at all, as if I dreamt our demise before it happened like Déjà vu, warning me not to turn the page in a Stephen King novel. Urging me to stay in this place that is so familiar and welcoming, where love is immediately felt as soon as you walk in, or in my case, wake up. How many amazing mornings I awoke before you, all the while trying to stay awake long after you’d drifted off the night before, memorizing every crevice, every line on your face, knowing one day you could be gone?

I never told you how I’d committed to memory the way you looked when you had finally wrangled sleep after fighting the rage and anger in your body. The way your eyes softened and slowly tuned out your pain as they became a landing spot for that day’s burdens you carried around. As the world closed down for the night, your only focus was on me, causing my heart to beat a little faster as you lifted the corner of your mouth like you knew what was ultimately coming. That peaceful sleep you sought came on my black silk pillow case with a face so relaxed no one would’ve ever known the demons you were clashing with during your waking hours. 

Sometimes I ask myself if it is grief that keeps me laying awake at night, too scared to close my eyes, laying next to the spot that has turned to ice without you. I have to believe it is grief that has me admitting to myself that I am to blame for the mess we’re in. With a swift slam of her gavel, grief has ordered me to have a lifetime of suffering. 

Suffering that takes form as living in this space where I could exist and be so close to you, only to have it persistently ripped away from me. Suffering in silence the day you texted me you were going on a date, knowing that I had zero right to fight for you and to tell you not to, as I pulled my pieces first. That bitter realization burned—that stolen date, a cruel mockery of what should have been, ignites a furious rage within me, knowing it was your last first date.

I will admit, I lived in this false hope during the first few years after the gavel sounded. I suspected you were punishing me for taking more of my pieces by telling me about your date. Did you want to see how I’d react? If I’d fight for you? Or replace the pieces I had pulled? All I know is that at that moment, I didn’t want you to see my reaction. The way my face fell, the way I covered my mouth, to silence the scream clawing up my throat, breaking the “no” that was stuck, because I thought I had more time. I needed more time to take my pieces and make them shine again. I needed more time to secretly fix them, to make sure they’d better connect with yours so that one day I’d feel like I deserved you. 

Did you know that I never felt like enough? Did you know that while you were fighting your demons, I was trying to conquer mine? I was tired of people leaving me, of rejecting me, and making me feel like I would never be enough or worthy of a love that you and I experienced. I couldn’t bear the thought of dragging you into my war while you were on the front line of your own battle. Distracted by your demons, I started the removal process. In a last-ditch effort of self-preservation, I pushed you away—starting with the pieces of my heart, then those of my life that were connected with yours—before you could reject me, too.

All my life I had poured into others, trying to fix my family, my friends, or whoever was around me who needed to be fixed. But all I needed was a chance to pour into myself. To fix my flawed pieces before you could really see me for who I was, not realizing you already knew me better than anyone else. I was so sure you were my ending, my prize at the finish line of a lifelong race, that I believed I could pour into you once I’d fully repaired myself.

I know that it’s too late to tell you all this. But I’ve never figured out how to say the things I needed to say because I have never experienced what you and I had. I have never again felt the chemistry, the connection, the mirror soul feeling that so many great love stories portray. I have never met anyone like you, ever. Which is why I thought we’d make it. Even when I bent the rules of love in a way that I thought would get me the end results I was after, you. I thought that by bending and breaking what we had, I could make you understand I twisted it to create something beautiful.

But that day, standing in the apartment, the look on your face, I knew that what I had bent, I’d never be able to make right again. It would always look ugly to you, no matter how beautifully sculpted it looked to me. I broke a part of you during that creation and when I realized just how broken you were; it broke me in new ways.

I didn’t realize just how far I was pushing you away and that when I was ready to reach out for you, you’d had drifted so far away from me you’d be on another island sheltering yourself. In more honesty than I could’ve given you that day, I think I wanted you to fight, for us, for me, for the real reason of my actions. I wanted you to drag out of my mind my motive behind the pain I was causing us. I just didn’t realize that what I wanted most was for you to hear all that I was shielding because in that moment it wasn’t just your pain and your hurt coursing through the room like a pulse; it was mine too.

After the day you left, I studied my life as an outsider looking in, so I could make myself realize I am okay. That I made it through the heartbreak of the greatest love story I have ever had. I know we don’t always receive what we want or achieve the fairytale ending that many great love stories promise. Because I think the person you love, the person you feel bonded to, isn’t always the person you get to end up with, which is one of life’s cruel jokes, if you ask me.

But what I know is that I am grateful for the experience of loving you. I experiences a fiery love, one that burns so deep within your chest that you forget how to breathe. I experienced first-hand what it feels like to meet your soulmate, someone who saw past your flaws and loved you regardless of who you once were and were still working on becoming.

Everyone deserves a story and a life. One that is worth waking up in the morning excited for. A life that is full of adventures but also full of peace. Because of you, I now know what it feels like to live a raw, real life, filled with love and heartbreak—a life worth waking up for. And for that I will forever be grateful.

With all the love still in my heart,

Your Soulmate