Broken relationships are some of the saddest things in life. I wish I could delete all the bad things that happened between us. From history and my memory.
The more you love a person, the more it hurts when they say or do things, intentional or not, that result in you feeling unloved. And the deeper the damage to the connection.
This is the truth.
Do you understand now how much I loved you?
Forgiveness is a choice, not an emotion. (Much like love, except love is also an emotion that springs from a choice.)
I chose to love you from the day we became friends (it was not just a feeling for me), and once things broke, I immediately chose to forgive you. I chose it over and over. I still choose it.
It has come with a lot of suffering, and there will be more ahead for me before reaching a state of indifference/ inner peace about what happened.
Something I learned: my suffering was rooted in displaced compassion. I had more compassion for you than I did for myself. It kept me in the line of fire. But not anymore.
My peace comes through becoming a bigger person than what was done to me. It comes from continuing to choose love, as I had all along, and not allowing another person’s lack of intention to love me, steal what is best in me.
This experience has put me on a better path. It taught me that I am worth so much more than I accepted. So I’m dreaming of more, hoping for more, and will never again settle for less.
This taught me that I should never regret loving or giving of myself. To not be ashamed of who I am, of how trusting, expressive, empathetic, or forgiving. Of how easily and deeply I can come to care about someone.
But it also taught me that there are some things a person just can’t say or do to me and remain in my heart and life. I have confidence, with what I learned, that if I could go back and do it all over again, I would have recognized the signs in the beginning, and it never would have happened.
But it did. And I hope that at least the pain I experienced wasn’t in vain; that it taught you something too…
Most importantly to appreciate what you have, because sometimes in life you only get one chance with a person’s heart. That if you fail to handle it with care, you can lose them forever.
I know you regret it, and you know it’s too late. That doesn’t at all make me feel better. It is just another heartbreaking consequence.
The bigger picture of “it was wrong” doesn’t mitigate that denying what we had was possibly even more wrong, a betrayal on the deepest level… and it had a ripple effect that extends far into the future, and that permanently changed my understanding of the past.
I feel for you, because I would not want to have to live with that… or expend the immense amount of energy it would take to run from it or keep it at bay. I saw it in your face… you attributed all the stress to other things, but I know there is more to it.
I have compassion because we’ve all made mistakes with unintended consequences. I know how horrible it feels.
But I did you no favors, trying to protect you (from facing the truth of what really happened, at the time that it happened) by absorbing all the responsibility for so long, a burden that proved to be too much for me.
I know I’ll make a full comeback (eventually), because despite the fragility I hide so well — that I trusted you with as I had with no other — I am strong. I’ve been through other versions of this before.
It won’t be in vain for me, that I know. I want to make this the closing chapter. The last time this theme ever plays out in my life. And that will take me doing things differently, starting now.
You don’t know this, but this is the end, the last communication I will ever have with you, barring God intervening in some way. You’ll likely never read it, or if you do, you’ll never know for sure it was from me.
But that is probably for the best. Because I’ve come to realize through all of this, I lost the desire for even a surface level friendship. I don’t want to have to force it. I just want to let it go. So this is not something I feel the need to tell you directly. It will just naturally happen.
You responded to me at times (the times I was hurting most, when I most needed compassion) as if I never mattered to you. I can’t forget how that felt (it has often come back to haunt me as part of the healing process), and I can’t open myself up to that again.
But know, you always mattered to me.
Then my eyes were opened and I saw that you had never been there for me to begin with. Even at that point, you did not stop mattering to me as a person (I can never be that way towards a person I loved), but maintaining the connection was something I no longer had the heart for, because I realized that it did not go both ways.
I hope deep down you understand, in the unlikely event you ever reach out and discover I’m not there anymore. It’s not personal or “getting back at you”… and if it seems inconsistent with how I was before, that is okay. I’m allowed to change my mind.
All it is, is taking care of myself. It’s that simple. I believe you would respect that.
At the bottom of it all, I know you’re a good person, that you were doing the best you could. I’ve come to a place of acceptance about it all.
I will be okay.
This is the story as I understand it, the closure I’m putting on this situation, based on what I experienced, what I observed, what I felt, and what you let me know, through your words and actions.
This is my story, and it ends with goodbye.
So, goodbye.
(And thank you.)