I will begin this letter by saying I will always be grateful that faced with me on your lap, threatening to do all manner of delicious things to you while my boyfriend (and your ex-boyfriend) pounded on the door, you chose to tell me that you would like that. For someone as painfully self conscious as you were to come out at all, much less under those circumstances, isn’t an easy thing at all.
And I want to thank you for being one of my only lovers to take me on dates. Walking through old historic towns, park swings, homemade ice cream cones dripping in the summer heat. Most made the assumption that because I could kiss strangers I didn’t appreciate love, that because I refused to have another monogamous relationship I wanted meaningless sex. You never made a single incorrect assumption, save perhaps one. And that wasn’t your fault, if I led you to make it, I am sorry for that.
We didn’t have much time together, only a few months before I moved away, and I’m sorry for that too. I’m sorry for the year that you waited, with dates you cut short to come home and call me. “I couldn’t do it,” you told me, over a continent and an ocean. “He wasn’t you. I want you.” And so I came back for you, but I came back scarred in ways I hadn’t been when I left. I came back unwilling to touch, to cuddle, to kiss – and you had finally worked up the courage to risk those things. When you reached out to me and I flinched away…I’m sorry for that too. It was never because I didn’t love you. It wasn’t because I didn’t think you were beautiful. You with your gorgeous eyes and your sharp fox nose. I always thought your nose was the cutest thing, and I have never lusted after anyone else for their nose. So you weighed twice what I did – I was anorexic! It’s hardly a fair comparison. You were beautiful then, and you are now. Especially when you smile.
I’m sorry for the two years that we struggled to reconnect – I should have stayed the first time. I shouldn’t have let shock and grief steal me away from you. I should have fought to stay, should have tried. I should have run away with you to get married. I should have left him sooner, because I never loved him like I loved you, I just knew that he wanted to possess me, to have me, to keep me, and I thought that I would be safe with someone who wanted all me. You did, but I didn’t see it. He didn’t, and I didn’t understand until I was too broken to fight with him. But you left him. You were strong enough for that. You left when he first stung you, but you always said I was the brave one. I wasn’t.
When you did end it, in the safe distance of an IM, I wasn’t angry. I’d already told people we weren’t dating anymore after the second month you returned not a call, not an e-mail, not a text message, not an attempt to reach you over IM. I wish you’d been able to do it sooner, but I know why you didn’t. “Don’t be sorry, you loved me when no one else did, and I’m never sorry for anything I’ve done in the past because it’s helped put me here, and I’m very very happy with where I’m at now.” You wrote that when I apologized to you just after you said it was over, and had been. Earlier, you told me I had taught you how to love again.
Congratulations, again, on your wedding. The pictures were fantastic. You were happy. Glowing. Radiant. It’s what I had always wanted for you. I had just always hoped it would be with me.
And there are the words I never told you. I never let you know just how much it hurt to lose you. I glossed over it, brushed it off as done, told you you were a beautiful bride. I never snapped at you. Never tried to make you consider that once I had waited and coaxed and trusted, until you felt beautiful and loved – and that when I came back damaged you were too busy to even try to reach out for me.
It isn’t what matters anyway. It isn’t the part of it I ever wanted you to hear. Not about the way I looked forward to the dates you couldn’t make, the flowers that wilted for you on my kitchen table in fragrant reminder you had cancelled again for weeks. Nor about the fact that you were the most important person in my life and my friends knew that, but you hadn’t mentioned my existence to yours.
I never pushed you when I came back. I just laid back, closed my eyes, waited for the rain and knew that love was forever. It was enduring. It was the only real thing in the world. I was willing to wait, if you were busy. I was willing to smile when you hurt me. I think it was my unquestioned faith in your love that let you think that I didn’t still love you. It would be the only time you ever read me wrong. And as I said in the beginning, I’m sorry for that too.
All of my love,
always,
~fox
The things we leave unsaid…… they hurt like hell in the aftermath, don’t they?
My relationship with my ex-fiancè as well as one with a close friend taught me about ensuring I didn’t leave anything out when it came to communicating. I found out the hard way that it’s the things left unsaid which kill me in the end. I’m left wondering “What if I’d told him/her that… would it have changed anything?” I say “What if…?” is one of my favourite games… but not when it comes to the autopsy of any relationship. Then it becomes the most painful question in the world.
I say the two relationships “taught me” not to leave things unsaid yet, here I am a decade down the track creating a site dedicated to posting letters which never reached the recipient…. so I’m still learning… obviously
I had this idea, in beginning this blog, that it could work like a message in a bottle. Whether the message washed up at the intended location would depend on two things. Firstly, if there were enough clues about the intended reader within the letter itself (i.e specific references to names and places) and, secondly, if your intended reader was wont to Google themselves
Who knows, a year or ten down the track, the addressee of your letter may stumble across this post. You won’t know it’s been read, but they will know you wrote it.
Just a thought.
This is such a concise letter. I don’t think there’s any room for you to be misread – not in your feelings nor your intentions. There is so much familiarity in the emotions expressed here. Like Jeremy’s letter, it makes me want to track down the addressee and point them to these posts and say “See? Do you SEE what you missed out on? WHO you missed out on?”
I orginally wrote a reply to this basic idea (except in my Ravyn’s comment section, but then it wouldn’t post!). I’m going to try to post it here. It covers basically all I would have wanted to say.
Except that I am quite pleased that you are so moved by this letter (and other letters) that you feel the need to go out an DO something about it. I always wanted to write something that got such a response. It’s good to know I did that, even if not as I intended at first.
And the orginal comment follows….
But what if some of us don’t do closure? *L* I sort of…get caught. I am glad I wrote the letter to my ex-girlfriend – a lot of the things I wrote I’d never really thought through, and certainly not spoken. I don’t WANT to tell her she hurt me.
And…honestly, I felt like closure to our relationship and its demise was when she got married. I wasn’t there, but I asked about it. She expressed surprise that I would. And I told her that I certainly wanted to know about her wedding, even if she hadn’t married me, and she sent me the link to her wedding pictures. And that was…a damn fine ending as far as closure goes. Without anger or yelling or blaming. I didn’t want it to end, but as it had to…at least we did right. With love.
To be fair though, I think she’s about the only relationship that ended that I had any real, positive closure for at all. Most of them are all…stringy and hanging in little bloody threads.
And you will perhaps note I discuss my letter in the comments section for my Ravyn’s letter. I always talk better in his space. *L* That’s where it’s safe, yeah? I can think of at least one letter I will have to write when I next visit. It will be inevitable if we watch more of The L Word. Which we totally must do. With rum filled chocolates. Rum. Filled. Chocolates.