You are the first person I ever shared my writings with and I don’t think you realize how intimate that is. When I write, I pour out my heart. When I write, the things that haunt my mind are laid out for those who read it. In my writings, I am vulnerable.
I have many fears, but vulnerability is the worst of them. I cage away the most sensitive parts of my soul like it’s some rabid beast and I forbid anyone to come too close. I would rather be alone, would rather be abandoned than allow someone to see me when I am vulnerable.
The world makes the loss of one’s innocence a substantial event. They mean sex, of course, but I think we could apply that significance to vulnerability. When you fully open your heart to someone–that’s when you lose a part of your innocence. You allow another person to see you entirely, you trust them to take care of that part of you.
So, when I opened my heart to you only to watch you leave, I felt violated. It’s like something was stolen from me, like you stripped away my clothes and left me exposed in the middle of a crowd. I feel naked–dirty, even.
Since then, I have learned to share my writings with others–but that does not make me any less vulnerable when I do so. That does not change the connection we had, the intimacy we once shared when I made you the first to see my prose and poetry. I still feel naked, but I have given up on trying to find my clothes.
There’s all these things I want to say to you, all these questions I want to ask…so I write them into letters. I write them because I can’t say them. I’ll never reach out to you and I know you don’t want anything to do with me. You made that crystal clear, after all. But if you did invite me out to talk, I know that somehow I’d end up apologizing even though that’s all I’ve done for the past two years. That’s why I’ll never face you. It’s so exhausting to be sorry, especially when I don’t know what I’m sorry for.
I have written so many letters that you’ll never get. They might be some of my best works and it kills me to know that I won’t send them to you. I want to, but I know better. It seems I’m always the writer of masterpieces you’ll never read.
I’m tired of writing these letters. So this will be the last of them.
You’ll always live on in my writing–the characters I crafted after you, the heartache and grief I imbued into all of my poems, and the endless stories I have written and will continue to write in the essence of you…Everything I do will have you in it because you left a permanent scar across my heart and soul. To be loved by a writer is to give yourself to the world. You didn’t want that, and so you ran.
I don’t know or care if you read my writing, but it doesn’t matter because I know you’ll feel it. There’s an invisible string that’ll never be cut, an everlasting tie from you to me. We can forget about it, but it’ll still be there. You’ll never escape me as I’ll never escape you.
I think people expect me to want revenge, to want karmic justice…and I say that I do sometimes even though it’s not true. I don’t know what, exactly, I want. I just want to be done with this.
You don’t understand why I am so hurt over you and that hurts in itself because I thought you were different, that we connected on a deeper level. Like my twin flame, it felt like my soul had finally found another that understood it. Others said they sympathized, but only you said you understood. So why don’t you understand now? Was it a lie?
Do you know how much it hurts when no one can understand you?
And maybe you’ve found someone to replace my void but I will never be able to do so. I have a lover now, and he tries his best…but he’ll never understand. He knows that too, and so he sympathizes, he comforts, he supports me. But he does not understand.
I don’t believe in soulmates because you were the closest thing I ever had to one and I just can’t live with the knowledge that you’re gone forever. No one will ever come close to the bond I felt with you. You’re the one who held me when I sobbed my heart out. You saw me at my lowest, you wiped away my tears, and you knew how fragile I was. So how could you do that? I worked so hard to allow myself to be vulnerable with you and all you did was show me why I shouldn’t have done so. Now all the wounds I healed are bleeding again and I fear they’ll never close.
I loved you like family. It’s like our veins held the same blood, like when God made my heart he put a piece of yours in it, too. You were the first person I wasn’t related to who said they loved me in some way and I loved you in the same.
I loved you. All of you. I trusted you with everything because you were everything. I believed wholeheartedly that, as long as you stayed by my side, I could live forever. You gave me strength in a time of suffering. Tell me, then, what happens when you lose the one thing worth living for?
When I look back on it, I believe the reason I loved you so much was because you validated me. You made me realize that I wasn’t unlovable despite the voices in my head saying I was. And so I loved you more—perhaps it was obsessive in a way. Maybe that’s why you ran.
I know now that it was wrong, but what was also wrong was looking into my admiring eyes while pushing me off the cliff.
Maybe it was God reminding me not to idolize others. That’s the only explanation I can think of.
Are you surprised to hear that I believe in God? I didn’t when I had you. And it goes two ways because when you were there, you were all I needed–but when you weren’t, I felt a pain so severe that I couldn’t believe in a God who’d let me feel it. Yet above all, no matter what you claimed, you were the only one I believed in.
I loved you at your worst, at your best, and your everything in between. You only loved me at my worst–and somehow, that hurts more than if you only loved me at my best. Because you put up with everything, but when I could return it, you didn’t want me?
Was it a savior complex? Were you intimidated by me? Just tell me what I did, please.
I’ll admit that I left first—but only because you gave me no choice. You love to twist the narrative, to make everyone see me as the villain. And I let you, I let you save your pride because I loved you. You didn’t tell them how you cast me out first, how you gave me no choice but to leave. You told me to go and I did. But if there had been any hesitation, any sign that you wanted me to stay, then I would’ve in a heartbeat.
Remember when you confronted me? I ran from you and you chased me down to chastise me. I wasn’t bothering you or anyone around you. It was you and only you who kept bringing us back from the grave. You put words into everyone’s mouth to put me down.
I may be bipolar, but the way you flip-flopped between love and hate was manic. It can’t be both. So did you love me or did you hate me? Don’t tell me, though, because it’ll kill me either way.
And the words. Those goddamned words. I don’t know why you said those things to me, why you felt the need to hurt me further. You told me you hated me. That I was a horrible person, that all my friends hated me, and that I was a burden to the world around me. “All our memories are painted over with black now that I know who you really are.” That is what you said and it haunts me every day.
I don’t know where you gained this twisted perception of the person I am. But knowing that you–who I only respected and saw with love–viewed me as a villain? That dug a knife deep into my heart and bled it dry. It made me want to die.
You never told me who I “really am”. You crafted an idea of me out of lies when I have only ever given you my absolute truth. Unlike you, I was completely honest about everything I ever gave you.
To this day, I still cry when I think about the words you said. All my life I have tried to be the best person I can be. I want to do good things with myself and make the world a better place. That is all I wanted for the longest time and you tore it down.
I know that I am no saint. I could’ve mended us, too. But you’re the one who switched sides so quickly just to dig the knife deeper into my heart. You wanted to finish me off when I was the one healing you.
You think I’m still hurting because I lost you but I’m not. I’m hurting because I don’t know why. The betrayal is what left the real scar.
When you left, I didn’t just lose a friend. I lost everything I gave to you, all my love, my time, and my vulnerability. All the nights we stayed up talking, all the boys I liked and told you about in confidence…it’s all gone with you. You took a part of my soul away and I’m never going to get it back.
You told me to move on, but I think you need to do the same. Moving on isn’t forgetting it all, it isn’t pretending like it never happened. It’s looking at the past, at our mistakes, and learning from it. I absorbed all the memories into my soul, built upon it, not around it. You threw a blanket over this hole in our hearts, but I found a way to mend it. I’ll always see the cracks, but I can rest easily knowing that it’s stronger than before.
I’m better now than I was before. I’ve healed. I forgave you. I learned how to love myself without relying on someone else. I’m proud of the person I’ve become despite your words still haunting me in my darkest times.
And still, I wonder who I would be now if we hadn’t suffered the way we did. I wish I could go back to before the pain.
I tried to preserve anything that was left of us. I dried us in a book and left it on the shelf to look at with nostalgia now and then. But it feels like you tried to erase any trace of me that remained. Are you ashamed? Don’t ignore something you knew was once so true.
Do you ever think about me? I still think about you. Sometimes I wonder if you’re alright.
I wish I knew the answer but I don’t. You’re a stranger now. A stranger whose laugh I still hear in my dreams. A stranger whom I write letters to, letters you’ll never get.
That’s fine. I’ll never be over it, but neither will you. And I still smile at that thought–for it is enough.