Dear my ‘What If,’

There is not much left to tell you, and though I can still say I wish we could have ended differently, the choice is no longer mine. I can’t go back in time and tell myself to ask you for explanations or question your previous actions. I can’t try to relive the past anymore to understand why you told me you loved me with no intentions of standing by those words.

As you have left me without reasons I can wrap my head around, I refuse to blame myself. There is clearly nothing I could have done differently in order to keep you- and I should not have to fight for a spot in someone’s life who genuinely wants me.

Therefore, I forgive you. I forgive you, and I let you go. For if you truly wanted me I would be in your life. If this was all a mistake, and you really wanted me, you would be trying to contact me to apologize and make things right. But you’re not doing those things. And so, it matters not what you said to me in the past. What matters is what you’re doing now- and what you’re doing is nothing.

I love you. I don’t think my heart will ever truly stop loving you and caring for you. But you are out of my life and out of my hands, and not my responsibility. I am much too valuable and strong to remain broken pieces upon the floor. I am much too much for you to handle or love properly at this time in your life, and unless you could convince me you would make changes in your life, I could never quite trust you wouldn’t do the same thing again.

I forgive you for what you have done to me. More importantly, I forgive myself for falling for someone I had always worried might not be able to catch me. I forgive myself for giving you that chance, knowingly sacrificing my heart, just to see if you would hold out. You didn’t. And that is okay, but now I must pay the price for my choices. I do not blame myself and if I could go back in time and do it again? I would.

Life is far too short not to fall in love and do your best to add joy into someone else’s life. Life is far too short to have walls and barricades and to not give yourself in too deeply for fear of getting hurt. Pain simply grows you, and shows you had something worth caring about. The pain is worth it, in the end. And now I know I can love fully, forgive fully, and move on past this brokenness in my chest.

I still see you as a good person with the potential to live a good life. But you? You have many inner demons to fight for quite some time, some choices to make, wounds to heal, and paths to forge. You have battles ahead of you that I clearly cannot be a part of. And that is alright. I allow you to go off into battle on your own, so you can do this yourself and discover who it is you want to be- what you want out of life. Face your storm and come out of it better than before, if you can. Like I had to in the past.

Maybe with those battle scars, you will finally see that life will be what you want it to be, and life is too short for anything less than trying to live the best life you can with what you love. I simply ask that in the future, you do not date someone unless you are honest with them… and you do not throw around terms of commitment if you have no intentions of fighting for it.

I will continue to love as I have loved you. I will continue to trust and try and work on my anxiety to let others make their own choices and allow myself to do what feels right to me without the input of outside sources. I will continue to care, continue to talk, continue to make mistakes and grow. And I will wait until I find the person who wants me, wants to grow with me, and accepts my flaws the way I accepted yours. I will wait until I find someone who fights for me no matter what they’re going through- someone who says ‘I love you,’ and means it with every fiber of their being.

Love is not enough to keep you, and you do not want me. This has been a bitter pill to swallow. But I will be made better for it, and now, I choose me. Now, I choose to refocus on my own life and what I want it to be, alone. Now, I choose to continue doing the things I love, trying hard at school, gaining new strengths, and developing into the type of woman that no one can forget. I will become the embodiment of my own storm. This will be one of those events which pushes me to surpass that which I have done before.

Much like my depression, I have to make the choice to stand back up, dust myself off and rebuild. A part of me died realizing you would not fight for me and would not come back to me. But all of me is going to come alive again with my love focused on solely my life and my dreams. I have so many doors open for me, and I choose not to compare my life with others. I will simply do as I can to make the world around me a better place. Nothing else matters to me except living the best life I can, and trying to add joy to others’.

I have given my wish to the Universe, and the Universe now knows that what I want in a man is someone who accepts me, wants me, and will be committed to us. The Universe knows I want a man who adores me, wants to travel and is fine not having children. A man who can handle rough times and stands with me no matter what is happening. A man who will be honest with me and not put me on a pedestal. A man who respects my asexuality. A man who is as excited about life as I am, even if more realistic than me. This is what I want. And I will not play games with my heart, trying to hand it out to people who choose not to accept it. It is not yours to handle anymore.

So I let you go. I choose to set myself free from your toxic choices. I choose to see who you were to me then and who you are now as two separate people. I fell in love with false hope that you fed into, and that is okay. It happens. I fell in love with a chance, and with a boy whose kaleidoscope eyes I’ll not soon forget. Who was so good at saying the right things at the right time, enough to convince me you were serious before you turned your back on me that fateful monday morning.

This has been my fleeting love. This has been my naive, teenage, juvenile attempt at lasting love. Maybe your path will cross back to mine at some point in the future, and we will both be different people, and you will say you want me- it’s always been me. But until that day, I must believe it won’t happen. I must let you go, and open myself up to the man who will find me and wonder why no one else has taken me. I must be open to the man who can commit and tells me he wants to see the world with me and no one else. A man who puts me as one of his top priorities while being able to maintain a life of his own as we get to know each other.

The Universe has my best interests at heart, and I must trust it knows what it is doing in pulling me in this new direction. I hear the calling of going my own way now, loving myself more, and letting you fall behind unless you decide to change and catch up to me. This love will not harden me, and I will not blame myself or beat myself up. This is not a failure. This is just a lesson, another memory for the past to claim. And now I know what it means to love so deeply you struggle to let go of it, for it is something worth fighting for, I believe. But I have also learned that even when I am shattered, I can get right back up and not give up on loving someone again. Love will not leave me broken or struggling.

This is my final goodbye to you. You have become my favorite ‘what if,’ and the prerequisite to greater things. A test of my own trust and commitment. I have passed my own test. Now, I move on to better things, healthier things, happier things. And my life will only be made better by all of this and the memories we’ve shared. You must return as a stranger to my life. As I have said, only if you were to come back insisting you would change could I even allow myself to give you a second chance. Without this effort you will simply be the same broken boy in the same broken place- and hurt people, hurt people. What once you have done you could very well do again. So I will guard my heart of you, and no one else.

Forgive me for my anger. Forgive me for the jokes I told, the way I could hardly stand to look at you but would not pretend you didn’t exist. You existed- I just couldn’t bring myself to see the person I thought would not leave me so soon, and without a reason I could grasp. I could not continue to see you without asking why. So, I had to put up a mental barrier.

You will not hear from me unless you talk to me first, unless you approach me first. Otherwise, I am completely capable of moving on without goodbyes from you. And I will not snap at you if you reach out to me- I am not a provoked animal, backed into a corner. I am proud, and I stand tall, hurting but happy regardless for the life I am living. I will simply tell you the things I wish I would have said before, without judgement. I do not wish to hurt you. I simply wish to say that next time, you save the ‘I love you’s for someone you’re not going to let go of. Words are powerful things. And if you come back to me trying to explain yourself, I will tell you that I still respect your choice, but I will never fully understand. Because in my eyes, if you wanted me, it didn’t have to end. So you didn’t want me. No other explanations needed. Because if you wanted me, you would have kept me there. You are not leaving me for my sake- you are leaving me for your sake, and that is alright. I wish you all the best, with a heavy heart.

Just because you didn’t want me doesn’t mean someone else won’t. I am valuable, and strong, and smart, and a thinker, creative and analytical, a dreamer and a doer. I am qualities of the sun and the moon contained within one woman who is fighting to take ahold of her life and have full use of the reigns. Society will not tell me what I should do, nor can anyone else. I will live the life that I choose to live, and someday soon, I feel I will break free from that teenage way of thinking and doing. I will be independent and powerful. I already am starting to get a taste of it.

Thank you for the memories. Thank you for saying all the things I wanted to hear. Someday, someone will say them and mean them, and that someone will stay. Thank you for teaching me to find beauty in broken things. Thank you for helping me realize I tried too hard to fix my anxiety- I was trying too hard to fix what wasn’t broken in myself. Thank you for allowing me to feel what it is to love someone unconditionally- even after they have gone and broken your heart, and your trust.

Thank you for setting me free.

I set you free. I wish the best for you, and hope that one day you fall in love with someone you don’t want to let go of. I hope you finally see that the world is not as dull as you make it out to be. There are good things out there when you choose to see them. I hope the pain of the past can eventually leave you and stop tainting your future. I will take all that I have learned from you and strut right into the future, because my life is waiting for me, while you are not. And I will not wait for you anymore. The promise of who you could be means nothing without you here.

Goodbye, M.

Sincerely,

E

• This topic was modified 6 years, 12 months ago by Isra.