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fragilelittlefeelings-blog · 7 years

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A Letter To My Ex

Hey,

It’s been a while. I know I’ll comment on your posts from time to time. Send the obligatory “Happy Birthday” on Facebook. You are always cordial and respond. You won’t initiate, but you’ll respond. I like to pretend sometimes that this is because you’re still hurt, but I know it’s because you’ve moved on. I don’t know why it feels better for you to be hurting than for you to be moved on. We were so long ago that the idea of “us” feels like a whisper in a dark room. But with my other senses taken from me, my heightened awareness of the familiarity in the word “us,” obsesses over the concept of what “us” means. Or meant. I force myself to remember the bad. The fights. My instability. The anxiety. The unnecessary distrust. Your parents hated me. Or at least I thought they did. And maybe that’s the bulk of it. Because I was so deeply lost in the forest of my anxiety and depression that I was trying to ignore, and I was pretending I knew the trail through, I distrust every memory. I distrust myself. Maybe it wasn’t so bad. Maybe those moments were much smaller than they felt. And they probably were. But what does it matter now?

Your girlfriend is beautiful. You tell me she will be your wife. I believe you. I don’t want to, but I do. I try to be happy for both of you even though I know my feelings about the topic don’t matter to anyone. Sometimes I pretend that her and I share similarities, but that’s untrue as well. She has a career. Her smile is breathtaking. She seems surefooted and intoxicated by the thought of you. I wonder if she pretends to listen to you talk about cars for countless minutes while getting lost in the comforting blanket of your voice and mesmerized by the movements of your lips. I wonder if you pull away from her kiss to complain about her smiling against your mouth because her lips disappear. Do you guys go on long drives at night and talk about how small you feel underneath the stars? Does she inhale as deeply as her lungs will allow every time you wrap your arms around her as to not let one second of your essence flee? Do you watch lightening storms tangled together and get lost in the smell of rain while she thanks a divine being she doesn’t believe in that she met you?

Does she start to tremble and gasp for air when you fight for too long? Does she shout at you because you care for her too much? Does she change from being distant to incessantly needy so fast that you never know where you stand? Do you stare into her eyes begging for an answer only to see the person you once knew within her vanish? Does she hurt you because she doesn’t know how to suffer alone? Does she torture you with promises of a future and expectations you will never live up to?

I know what I did. I tore your heart out and took pleasure in watching it writhe on the floor. I molded myself into your wishes and then melted into a storm you couldn’t control. This is all a distant memory to you now. A fleeting thought when someone brings up the school we used to go to. A scar that has long since been healed and covered with lessons and new experiences. Every inch of your skin that I kissed is now covered by the lips of another. I should be okay with that, yet something within me still itches for more.

My sister married someone with the same name as you. Now you are referred to in my family as “my Alex.” The weight of the words on my tongue are comforting, but they taste foreign. When I left you something within me said it was temporary. I was leaving to experience the world, and then expecting you to be there at the end. I wanted you to wait quietly on the edge of the river. Cool water rushing over smooth rocks. My feet excitedly finding their way through the dangerous night air. Summer ran through our veins. I wanted it to freeze you. I needed to keep going through the waters and find what was waiting at the bottom for me. But in my determination I didn’t notice you walking along the bank, away from me. I told you to go, and so you did.

I yearn for you. I yearn for 16. I long for the feeling of love kissing the tips of my fingers and adding color to my cheeks for the first time. I fall back to thoughts of you confessing you had told your friend I was ‘the one’ in a drunken stupor at the cabin. I miss the laughter that overtook me so entirely. Your smile. Running through sprinklers in our underwear. Kissing under the cover of darkness at the radio towers. My heart pounding as you snuck into my room through my window late at night. Climbing out onto your roof. Watching you messily scribble my favorite ice cream onto your bedside table. Falling asleep to the sound of you breathing and your eyes heavy with exhaustion over Skype. Waking up to cute messages you left in front of your webcam. Making eye contact with you during class through the window that connected our adjoining rooms. The surprise in your eyes when I kissed you for the first time. Sneaking away from prom to explore the empty building. Kissing in the stairwell as lightning cracked outside. When we found out that neither of us really wanted to go.

I miss you. I miss the “us” that I used to know. Maybe I miss me when I was with you. Not the lost child who was scared and attacking the only sure thing she knew. I miss the freedom I had with you. Within us. We slept in different houses and different floors and it never mattered as long as we were falling asleep next to each other. I miss being excited about life. How constantly new everything was. I felt full with you.

All I know is that after 5 years my thoughts still seem to lead back to you.

Your truly,

Scrub

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