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letters-to-my-dear-ex-boyfriend · 4 years

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Dear Ex Boyfriend,

I don’t know If I will send this. Its all very dependent on your response to the last letter. I am hopeful this will get sent, but only time will tell. Who knows, maybe we will let technology seep in ever so slightly and use email. At least with email we know it will arrive.

I do this now, I write. I do it for me to get a lot off of my mind. Its somewhere I can go back to if I need to rethink or readjust a storyline in my head. Its therapeutic. Its sad. I would rather just talk these things through with you. I would rather have a conversation. I would rather we tried to work through this. We got therapy, we worked on us, worked on our communication. I would rather a lot of things, that aren’t this ending. I think that is what hurts the most. That I saw so many other avenues before this one.

Do you hate music? I hate music now. I don’t think you will have the same feelings towards music as me. But I think that is because your music choices tend to centre more around drugs, someone getting shot, or about some cheating hoes (this list isn’t exhaustive of all your music). But my music tends to be the junk on the radio that harps on and on and on about love, being loved, loving someone, and just absolute utter shit I don’t want to listen to. Any joyous song I once used to just quietly play in the background, now invades my personal space and makes me relive that Friday over and over again.

I do have to thank you though. Not exactly for what you did, and absolutely not for how you did it. But you did free me. I don’t stare at clocks anymore calculating what time it is in Scotland. I don’t rush through my day to make sure I am available during my most productive midday hours to not be productive but to sit on a video call. Some good is coming from this. BUT the reality is that I could have had that same good if we were simply in the same time zone. This is only freeing because of the time zones. I wouldn’t be appreciative of it or even thankful in the slightest if we were in the same time zone.

We briefly messaged back and forth the other day. But I had to stop it. It was feeling too normal. Too back to normal… That was the problem. It felt like we were back to the old days, of just chatting about anything and everything. But I stopped it. I was heavily policing myself. In a very tiring way. A way I don’t want to police myself anymore. Policing myself wasn’t hard, it was just doing it for someone I hadn’t had to do that for-for years. That was the hard part. Talking to you wasn’t hard. Letting you know how G was, wasn’t hard. Omitting the fact that D had been struggling greatly, that I suddenly became the only thing between him and a really horrible outcome. That was hard. That is hard. The first person I wanted to call was you, even though it was 8pm at night, so you wouldn’t have been available anyways. I also couldn’t call you, as I was trapped on the phone with D for hours. I wasn’t free until midnight, where I was barely free, I was exhausted, and would feel the aftermath of that call for days to come. So its been a lot.

The one time I really needed my trusty support system, I don’t get it. But at the same time that isn’t so different from how it had been at times. I try so incredibly hard to suppress that one summer visit when my grandmother died, and you spent it skydiving. I don’t know who to be mad at for the trip. Myself for not speaking up and asking you to not do the one thing you love the most in life. Or you for not seeing the obvious heart break I was going through and to choose to step back yourself. I still don’t know who to be mad at. I think I am mad at us both. Me for not mustering up the energy to speak up, and you for not seeing this as such an obvious time to spend more time with me, not less. I knew you loved skydiving, I knew that that trip was all about skydiving for you. But when we packed and left for Canada we didn’t know we were going to arrive to a death, plans should have changed right then and there. But I wouldn’t ask you to change them. I never did, and never would. That trip has never not stuck with me. I had thought back to it all the time and still do. It confuses me, I don’t like that I don’t know what the right answer is, and that maybe there never was one. I don’t like forcing people to do what is seemingly right, or better for the greater good. I want people to get there themselves, on their own accord. The same way I didn’t want to force you to move to Canada, maybe my silence was the same mistake.

I had a funny little moment of realization today. I think this pandemic made me into the person you might have wanted. I became this homebody that cooks, cleans, works out, goes on daily long walks, is independent, and is working from home. I don’t know that that is exactly what you wanted, but I have a feeling that that person wouldn’t make you unhappy, you wouldn’t not be pleased. This whole time I wanted to push back against being that person. But here I am, and Its not the worst thing ever. I could easily do this for lifetime. The important part being that I am not alone, that the cooking and cleaning is a constant team effort with my mother, and walks are with her too. I am independent, but not doing much alone. Which is exactly what I always wanted. I wanted to just not be alone, to share moments on long walks, or cooking together. I just wanted those little moments of us, just us. Every single one on one hike, dog walk, movie night, dinner, afternoon tea. I was at my happiest, I wanted the gift of one on one time with you, I just wanted us to get back to basics, back to just us.

I think I must have reached the part where you sit around bargaining. But its a weird form of bargaining. Its not just relationship related. It isn’t me thinking of all the things I would give up and do for you. Although that is part of it. Its me bargaining everything. Its me debating if this is how I want to spend the rest of my 20s, stressed, chained to a desk, chained to school. Is that what I want. Pandemics are wild but great for self reflection. You finally get to slow down and breathe. Your brain finally gets a chance to get out of that fog of stress and burnout it has lived in for years. I don’t think this is what I want right now. It is something I want, and in an ideal world I would do it right now, I would get it out of the way. So that I could just live my life the way I want, after doing all the steps to please everyone in my life. I can go screw off and live in a van and travel, but hey at least I have a PhD. I guess I am bargaining. I used to see a PhD as something that wouldn’t always be available to me, so I had to do it while I could. Who knew that you were what wouldn’t always be available to me.

You were saying that our relationship had been flawed for a while now. At first I just couldn’t grasp onto why that came as a surprise. Obviously it was flawed. We met on exchange, you lived in Germany, I lived in Canada, I moved home for months, I lost funding for my masters, I moved back to Scotland to be live alone, I started a new degree, I started to train Walt, you left the army, you moved back to Scotland, we moved house, you lost money in trades, you started a new job, I finished my thesis, I defended my thesis, I couldn’t find a way to stay other than a spouse visa, we had to give Walt back, I got kicked out of the country, you moved house, I started a new degree. It was like a never-ending list of hurdles to be jumped. It wasn’t going to be perfect. It wasn’t perfect. But I was happy to wade through that bullshit with you. I saw the light at the end of the tunnel. That light was Canada, and us being there together, back to basics, just us. That clearly didn’t happen.

I tried to think about when I was at my happiest in our relationship. Actually, I thought about when I was happiest in my life. 2 instances stand out. Both instances were when I did something crazy, something not quite normal, something for me. I did an extra year of school so I could go on an exchange, and moved abroad to do a master’s degree. Both times I cried at an airport leaving home. But I cried even harder moving back home afterwards. I never wanted to come home, I never wanted those experiences to end. I still tell everyone that they were the best experiences of my life.

I have grown J. For multiple reasons. I am off the birth control that left my depressed and in a fog. I finally have the opportunity to breathe and think without the burnout and stress of school. I have gotten therapy and speak with a professional weekly. I have grown. I have seen the mistakes I made in our relationship, that I denied for years. I see the times where I was in the wrong. I see that now. But I needed time to see that. I needed time to learn from them. I needed time to mature. I hope you have managed to do the same. I hope you have found an opportunity between work and James to think. To breathe. To mature in similar ways. I hope you still want to live in a van, travel, and skydive. I hope you still want to eventually get a dog and live on a big chunk of land in a log cabin. I hope your dreams haven’t change. I just hope you have grown the way I have.

You said it yourself that life is this wild thing and who knows what will happen. We have lived just one version of our story. But its all just one of those create your own story adventures. You can choose to stick to your guns, do something out of a RomCom, be stubborn, be empathetic, be open, be willing to change, be willing to risk it all, or choose nothing at all. You can just close the book and decide that is that. What I am trying to say in a super cheesy RomCom way is that I haven’t closed the book. I am ready to make some pretty crazy decisions. Decisions that will make people shake their heads in disbelief. I have done what I do best. Researched. I googled, I asked questions, and I have come up with possible plans. I have done what I always do, except this time I have done it with me in mind. With us in mind. Not with my family in mind, my friends in mind, my colleagues in mind.

I hate that I can’t just hop on a plane to Scotland right now. To do this in person. To just talk. I hate that this is all happening now. I hate that this is happening. But it is. And I am going to come out of this better. In everyway. I will be better inside and out. For me. I will come out on top. The question is where will you come out, where do you want to come out, how do you want to come out, and with whom?

Let me know when you have had a chance to breathe, to think, to mature, to grow. Let me know when you have though about different versions of the story, and what version you would prefer.

Let me know when you know. Clearly, I am ready to bargain.

With love,

Ex Girlfriend

This whole thing is just damn weird. My friends are all getting engaged in relationships that barely touched the surface of hardships we went through. They are just hoping love is enough to get through it down the road. But we did all that, we did survive. Through hard times caused by a multitude of little things we had been dealing with for a long time before. Things that before defined our success, became the last straw. It’s a hard pill to swallow. Evidently, I am not ready to swallow it. I am not ready, I also do not want to.

#dearexboyfriend #heartbroken #heartbreak #dumped #heart break #breakup #broken

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