A Letter To My Ex: A Reminder Of What You’re Leaving Behind

There’s a hollow void in the sky tonight. It’s swallowing us up, stealing our dreams. It isn’t expansive, but it is empty and everything we hope for gets lost within. The stars aren’t out tonight, but it is only me, cold and alone, who looks upon the great sea above me for answers. I’m missing you and it is evident that this feeling will encompass every piece of me until, by some miracle of God, I am able to forget. Then and only then, piece by piece, will I be whole again. For without you, I am a broken puzzle.

Tell me why you left me like this, with nothing but my thoughts and my old, tattered dreams of us together. It is impossible to rid myself of all these feelings, of all this sorrow that weighs down on me like bricks sinking to the ocean’s sandy bottom. I see myself floating in the great abyss of anguish and it is all I can do to keep from drowning. Maybe I should stop trying to stay afloat. Maybe I should let the current of regret and memories wash me away.

Until I met you, I was a lonely speck of dust sitting on the bookshelf of life. No one gave me a second glance, but you did. And for a time, I was the envy of the stars. I was higher than the moon on that summer night when we swam alone in that quiet pool of solitude. The wind has swept that summer away and replaced it with cold abandon. Suddenly you were gone and replaced by a physical ache so great I cried buckets.

Apparently love isn’t always enough. That’s something that has been told to me over and over in music, books, and in the testimony of others. I always thought that I was different. Maybe I could be the one to finally achieve that perfect love that would never end or be altered. Even now, I’d give up everything for the promise of a love never ending.

But that is something that no one can guarantee.

If you could write it in stone and promise me that everything will work out, I would escape my doldrums tomorrow and fly with you on a journey to infinity. That is impossible, though, because we are only human.

So, before you go, let me remind you of all that you are leaving:

• You’re leaving behind a girl with the ability and the desire to love you unconditionally. A girl who will never question her feelings, who will do and has done everything for you that’s humanly possible.
• You’re leaving a girl who would physically alter the sun’s rotation for you no matter how much it burned.
• You’re giving up a love so big that this heart couldn’t contain it. My heart has burst with all the love I gave and all the pain your actions reaped.
• You are turning your back on something beautiful.

But I have learned that everything beautiful is finite. What’s the beauty in something that lasts forever? A rainbow is momentary, like the flap of a butterfly’s wings or the first smile of a small child. Beauty can only be captured in photographs, in memories, and things that fade and die. If we were to last forever, maybe it would no longer be beautiful. Maybe there is beauty in the pain that stems from your leaving me alone.

I sleep alone like I used to sleep before I met you. I forgot how lonely it was to wake up with no one there. I got so used to waking up to that sleeping face of an angel that now it haunts my dreams. In these dreams you are mine and no one else’s. They are selfish dreams of hope where I bask in the prosperity of you throughout my REM cycle. And then, like a patch of clover on a dreary morning, my hopes are trampled with the harsh awakening to reality. Maybe this is why I sleep more than I ever have before. Maybe longing for you is so stifling that these phantom versions of you are better than the alternative. Maybe you’ll haunt my dreams forever. At least, then, a semblance of us remains. My dreams will never wither and die like we did.

I used to believe that there was a wonderful plan for my life. I thought that my perpetual loneliness and un-fulfillment was only a temporary stage in my life and that one day replacing it would be eternal hope and joy. I believed that you were my silver lining, the prince that would un-cage my Rapunzel-like life.

You helped me let down my hair, so to speak. I never thanked you for that. You changed my life, boy, and you gave me something to look forward to every day that I woke. Now, I only wish for each day to pass with the swiftness of the birds so that I will be one day closer to seeing you again and hoping you’ll change your mind.

I can’t hope these things forever. I cannot allow my life to be controlled by this vague notion of one-day reconciliation. I cannot allow my entire existence to be moldable like putty in your large, familiar hands. Those hands once held mine in a dark movie theater and I knew that I wanted to hold those hands forever. Now I’ll never have that chance again.

I want to curse you for robbing me of what is possibly the greatest love of my life. You were my best friend, my lover, and my confidant. I trusted you with every minute detail of my lamentable existence. I wanted to know everything about you. I wanted to bury myself deeply into the warmness in your eyes and never again be released.

The sky looks like rain again. The cold is seeping in through the fabric of my jeans. I haven’t felt alive since last we kissed. I never expected to never show you affection again.

Life has a funny way of sneaking up on the unsuspecting.

The memories of our happiness fade with each rainy day of solitude I endure. My love is steadfast. It is forever and because of this, it is deeply hideous. It is not one moment etched in time, but ions of seconds and minutes and hours that I go on without you.

You, on the other hand, are doing so much better. You have something new, something fresh, and different. But that something is not me and never will be. I think that’s what hurts the most. I was replaceable – easily replaceable to the one person who I ever really loved. If I could be replaced by you, how could I possibly be anything permanent to anyone else?

People say that love can last forever, but I’ve never seen that. I’ve lived two decades under the umbrella of hurt and never have I witnessed a truly happy ending. These figments of the human imagination are only storybook fables.

The tears burn my weathering cheeks as each vicious gust of wind blows. We only grow older. We only lose time. Nothing done can be erased like these words on this page. Maybe that is why I live so often in a world of fiction. I can remind myself that none of it is true, except that all of it is. Every word written has meant something to someone. There is pain and misery and heartache and death in words.