An Open Letter to My Last Lover

I've been thinking a lot about us lately. 

And I think I finally admitted to myself that there never really was an us.  There was you and there was me and there were moments when I thought maybe. 

I wanted so desperately to be wanted.  Needed.  Loved.

I wanted with all my heart to believe you when you said you loved me.  I wanted even more to believe myself when I said I loved you too. 

But if I loved you, you would know everything there is to know about me.  But you never looked to see below the surface, content instead to skim the top.  And all the secrets I have stayed silent.  And all the words I could have said chose to say nothing at all.

But oh my foolish heart.  She wanted to be yours.  She would have slayed dragons for you, fouht against any injustice, stayed by your side through think and thin.  She would have been your warrior.  Your best friend.  Yours for all time... If you had really wanted her.

My heart cried for days until my head told her to just hang on.  We've been here before we said to ourself.  We may bend but we never break.  He will not be the last man you love.  And what you felt only felt a little bit like love.  A little bit with a whole lot missing.  He never even knew your favorite color was brown.  Or that sometimes you wake up in the middle of the night screaming for your Mother.  Or that there are some hurts so deep he'd never be able to unbury them all.

The truth is he was in his own orbit.  And you were a star circling his sun. 

You loved who you thought he was.  You loved who you thought he might be. You loved the idea of what you could be together.  You loved a dream that fell asleep too fast and woke up too soon.

So now you're left with only silence.  You don't know how to go back to just being a friend and you know you can't move forward with someone who didn't tell you the entire truth.  And so you mourn both a failed relationship and a friendship that was worth even more than the short few months you thought you might be something more.

And so you do the only thing you can... You move on. 

And you forget all the little things he said.  And you forget how you used to smile just to hear his voice or the sound of his stupid ice machine.  And you avoid even thinking about any memory that holds a piece of him.  You can't survive an avalanche if you insist on standing beneath it.  And this time you're saving yourself from a heartache you just can't let take control.

So you push back and you reach out and you grab an opportunity to grow.  And when the new voice says hi you say an even steadier hello.  And the conversation begins just with a new name, a new face and a new we'll have to wait and see.  It doesn't have to be love but that's not to say it won't bloom and grow...