Editor’s note: This is a letter to the editor from an anonymous reader. Its author asked us to post this letter to their ex-partner in order to help them heal from past trauma and gain resolution. Names and locations mentioned have been changed for privacy. Content warning for sexual assault, suicide, and substance abuse mentions.
You’ll never fully understand the magnitude of consequences that I faced after you broke up with me. While it’s not helpful (or accurate) to blame you for the horrific direction my life took after you left it, I still can’t help but feel quite bitter over your role as a catalyst in the past four years of my life going so awry. If we had never crossed paths, not a single thing about my life would be the same as it is now. In a lot of ways, though, I’m learning to be thankful for that.
When we were together, I had never been in a relationship before. I was very inexperienced, pretty shy, and still trying to find myself. At the time, I guess I mistakenly thought I could find myself in you. I thought love was all we needed. No one outside of my family had ever told me they loved me until you did. I got swept up in that. Not only did someone finally love me, but it was a really amazing and kind person who was loving me. Or so I thought.
You washed your hands of me so fucking fast my head spun. You threw me to the wolves. I went out on a limb for you; I moved halfway across the state just to be in closer proximity to you. I did my best to not be jealous of you already having a pre-existing relationship that very clearly took precedence over me.
I’m not sure I agree that the mistakes I made, the ones that marked the beginning of the end of us, were severe enough infractions to warrant throwing the entire relationship away. Maybe there were other factors at play, though. Your girlfriend at home didn’t seem to like me at all. Probably because you kept breaking the rules you had established together before you ever met me. Didn’t that agreement list on your corkboard refer to new people as “pals”? That probably should have been red flag #1 for me. I never wanted to be a fucking “pal.”
But I liked you, a lot. So, even though deep down I wished I could be in the position she was already in, I went out on a limb and built my life around being close to you. I guess Stevie Nicks and her landslides didn’t get through to me because I deluded myself into thinking this was going to be an OK arrangement for me. I didn’t get the feeling that your girlfriend was very happy with what was going on, either.
Of course, it’s no one’s fault but my own that I did that. You didn’t ask me to come to Pueblo. It’s my own mistake for trying to build something solid on such a shaky, questionable foundation. It’s really not even the point, whose fault it is or who fucked what up. I just wish I had been more rational, but I let myself get swept up and carried away in your energy.
The ending was so abrupt. I was not expecting that. I mean, I knew you were upset with me over what had happened at the roller skating rink. I just didn’t anticipate that it was going to be an unfixable issue that ended up costing me everything. When you weren’t in my life anymore I quickly went from fragile but whole to entirely shattered. I was despondent; I was crushed. I was so mad at myself; I was so upset and confused why everything had cooled off so much faster than I was ready for it to. At the time, that breakup was the worst, most painful thing that ever happened to me. It was unbearable. I felt scared to ever botch something with a boyfriend ever again because look what one evening of foolish decisions cost me.
Not only that but Taylor, the person who we encountered at the rink, turned out to be fucking horrible person. Completely, entirely unredeemable. A total sack of shit. A disgusting, abhorrent person who to this day I still hope drops dead. When I started living with him, my life went to hell so fucking fast. He tried to sexually assault me more than a few times. That was how I learned to fight off an attacker (even though he was a piss-poor excuse of a perpetrator.) That was how I learned to take a walk from dawn til dusk, so I wouldn’t have to be in the house and subjected to leering, ogling looks and unwanted groping all day long.
Then his sister brought home some illegal drugs. I’d been sober from drugs for a year and a half by that point, but then, before I knew it, three years’ worth of continuous benders had drained the life from my eyes and eroded my spirit. I just wanted to forget about you. I wanted to forget how much I missed you and how angry at myself I was for losing you, and to add insult to injury, all for someone whom I ended up fucking hating with every fiber of my being.
As the situation continued to unfold, I ended up swallowing a bunch of sleeping pills with some vodka, but I was on meth, so I didn’t overdose (I guess … ?) and I was so torn up over the stark contrast between the love and care you had shown me and the disgusting, objectifying perversion of someone I already resented from the start for having a hand in causing me to lose you. I didn’t want to be here anymore.
Then, with all this extra stress, I just couldn’t repress being trans anymore and started going for it. Taylor did not like that. At all. He kicked me to the curb faster than you can say my pronouns are she/her. I was homeless in Pueblo in the winter, on drugs, and trying to transition, all at once. I was facing all of that with not a single person on my side. No one saved me. I went to some very dark places. Us breaking up had, at that point, been the most painful and difficult thing I ever went through. Then, over the next few years, I went through a lot of things that were much worse than even my worst fears. I had to fight tooth and nail to survive that situation, and after I lived through that, I became jaded and cynical.
Now, I’ve been sober from drugs for eight months. I’ve been working really hard on myself because I do, despite everything, still believe I can find love. I really want to. I don’t do well on my own. Over the past six months, I’ve been learning how to be OK with being single. It’s working, I feel okay now. I feel ready. At this point I don’t feel like I’d be using whoever I date as a life raft to keep myself from drowning in the deep and stormy oceans of depression and insecurity within myself. I feel ready to find someone who is just as ready to devote themself to me as I am to them, someone who will accept me for all that I am, flaws and mistakes and all.
I have embarrassed myself and made a fucking fool of myself in every interaction we have had since the day you ended our relationship. So this time, I’m really not looking for correspondence. This is me, trying to work through all the excruciating feelings that I should have let myself experience four years ago, when this shit all went down. Instead I chose to numb myself with drugs. No more, now.
I’ll never get the retribution that the angry, bitter parts of me still insist that I’m owed. I’m learning to be OK with that. You don’t owe me anything, obviously, and I don’t even want any sort of reply to this letter. It is just supposed to give me a little more peace of mind to have said my piece to you, and this time while not under the influence of drugs. Not while making emotionally charged statements in the heat of the moment that I’ll later regret. I mean, given the subject matter, I think this one is pretty level-headed of me. By my standards, at least. (The bar is on the floor.)
Don’t let people fall for you if your heart isn’t in it. You’re very charming, kind (except to me,) and good-looking, I know you know that. That’s why for awhile I did nothing but get high on drugs, because that was the only way to make my life feel bearable without you in it. I just wanted to fucking forget you. I needed to. And I did for a while. But now being sober, it’s like a dam burst. It’s like this just happened to me all over again.
Trying to use drugs to cope with my feelings only brought me more trouble down the line. Now, I lay awake at night ruminating on all the ways I fucked this up. Never being able to fix it, never being allowed to know what’s up with you ever again. I do still care, of course, about whatever is going on with you. I’ll never get to know, though, and I’m working on accepting that. I told you the last time I saw you that I’d always love you. That wasn’t bullshit. If it hadn’t ended by dropping off a cliff, I’d still feel warm and fuzzy about everything we did together. So I’m stuck dealing with feeling a weird mix of regret and gratitude.
I’m way tougher than I used to be, emotionally. I’m scrappy now. I used to be a lot more meek and mild, I think. I didn’t enjoy making my voice heard. Now I love shouting at the top of my lungs every day. I feel empowered to do something to turn my life around because I love myself now, and you really aren’t worth torpedoing my own chances at success over. It was a pretty significant loss, but that’s something that has helped me become a more formidable force to be reckoned with. Like that saying, diamonds are made under pressure. Or whatever.
My character development is only because I have such a heavy cross to bear though. My life became a very dangerous trial by fire for a while. I faced all of it, alone. I survived things that some people would probably jump in front of a bus before trying to handle. Some days I wish I’d never met you, and others I’m happy I went through everything I did because now I get to be proud of my progress, and that’s a wonderful feeling.
So … thanks for changing my life, I guess. You’re not here to see the results, and that’s a shame. Thanks for the lesson, it was very hard to learn but I’m so much smarter now for knowing it. Someday soon I know I’ll find happiness and true synergy with the right person.
Photo courtesy of Unsplash
