It’s fine, everything’s fine.
No, it’s really not, but it will be.
Relationships are not easy. They’re never easy. Relationships require compromise. They require you to extend yourself for the sake of the other. I thought we had developed a relationship. Perhaps our relationship was actually a situationship.
These last few months I’ve gone from hating you, to missing you, to forgiving you. It’s ridiculous the amount of time I have spent trying to sort through what everything meant. I wonder if you’ve given it one thought. We’re so very different. How did we get here? Why did our relationship evolve the way that it did?
I think about how we began. Wild, crazy, spur of the moment, and then it continued. It continued until it ended. We took a break. And then it began again. This was our pattern. For weeks, months, and then a year. Until it really ended. We haven’t talked since.
I have an internal debate every day, wondering if I should reach out to you and say hi. I’m terrified of the outcome. Either you’ll turn me away or we’ll slip back into the vicious cycle we’ve been through multiple times before. So I don’t say hi, I don’t reach out, but I do think about you. I wonder if you’re thinking about me. It hurts me. I’m convinced you don’t.
I have a strong desire to be close to you. I miss you when I can’t see you or talk to you. I think about you all the time. I guess if I had to sum it up, I’d say I still love you.
If I could turn back time, I don’t know what I’d choose. Part of me thinks we shouldn’t have ever begun. Part of me wishes we’d never ended. I miss you. You’d become my habit; my drug. I was addicted. We talked daily for hours. We shared stories and we talked about our pasts. We’d gotten to know each other, I thought. I miss that friend. Smart me, or realistic me, or scarred me realized we were never really friends. And that hurts.
I’ve been through a lot. I’ll spare the details, but it’s part of who I am. As much as I’ve grown past all of it, it’s a part of me. And it’s meant to be told. For me. For healing.
I am a happy person. I have a good life. I love my family. I love my friends. When I’m someone’s friend, I’m all in. Unfortunately, I let my guard down, despite my gut instinct. I got hurt… BAD. I got sad. I was traumatized.
Life’s not fair. You’ve heard it before – you’ve said it, it’s true. I’m not saying emotional trauma defines me in any sense. I’m admitting it’s become a part of me and I need to accept it as such. Someone broke me. That doesn’t mean I am weak. It only means I have a big heart and I let the wrong person in.
You shouldn’t have lied and told me I could trust you. You shouldn’t have lied and told me you loved me if you didn’t. You shouldn’t have played with my emotions, insecurities, or life. Don’t pretend to be my friend if you just plan to use and lose me. You spent months breaking down my walls of insecurity only to crush the person behind them.
I trusted you. I let you in. You devastated me. I participated, yes. HELL, I CLUNG TO YOU. I thought you were my friend. You played me and won. Then you walked away. You left me to pick up the broken pieces alone. You said, swore, promised you wouldn’t. I can’t even describe the pain your presence in my life has caused. It will haunt me for the rest of my life.
You asked me once, “A question that’s always hung out there for me was if you resent me or getting involved with me because of the way things turned out?”
At the time I didn’t resent you. I’d wished on multiple occasions I could just go back to being that ME, but if I had, I would’ve missed the experience of you. I wish now I’d never fallen for your lies. Mostly, I wish your words had been true. It’s hard to admit it, but I miss you.
You were deceitful. I know I can’t be mad at people for not feeling or caring about others like I do. But, I can be mad when people say I can trust them, when I was right from the start that I shouldn’t.
I trusted you. I wanted to believe you were good. I wanted to believe that you were my friend, that you cared, and that you were who you said you were. But, you proved me wrong. Again. And again. And… again. Yet, I couldn’t give up. Something about you pulled me in and kept me close. I wanted you. I wanted to be near you and be your friend. I wanted to be that person you could lean on. But I failed. I failed you. I failed me. Because we weren’t friends. You were just using me.
I loved you. I believed you loved me too. I forgive you. You taught me a lesson I won’t soon forget. The scars that our friendship caused me will forever be with me. I sacrificed my beliefs. I sacrificed a lot. I have no idea how you truly feel. Perhaps I never will. Box it up, tape it, and shove it wherever you put things you don’t want to think about, worry about, dwell on. That’s what you do. I know that. It’s always driven me crazy as I know I’ve driven you crazy too. We are who we are. We haven’t changed.
My biggest fear is losing people in my life. I’ve lost so many. Goodbyes are hard and painful. I shared all this with you and you said it wouldn’t happen to us. We had too much invested, you said you loved me. You lied. You left. And, you suck. You’re not a nice person. At all.
Our relationship/situationship taught me a lesson. I’m strong. I knew this before, but events confirmed I can be taken to my all-time low and still bounce back. I believe in myself again. I regret that it took me so long to realize this. I regret that I didn’t cut you out of my life after you encouraged me to make the worst decision ever.
Something like that is never completely behind you. But I’m trying to do the best that I can to move on and be positive and not be the mess of a person that I know I am if I dwell on it. That’s not to say that I don’t have days that it’s on my mind, because I definitely do.
I want so badly to be mad at you. I’ve tried so damn hard. But, I find myself defending you. Our relationship, or whatever it was, meant something to me.
by Gwen Kielman
