What I should've Said (But Never Did)

 

It's coming up on five years. Five fucking years. You've been out of my life almost as long as you were part of it.

I don't want you to think that I sit around, doing nothing but pining for you and listening to old, sad bastard music because I'm still just so heartbroken. I am trying to move forward. Hell, I've had a couple of other women mistreat me since you abandoned me. But they were never as dear to me as you were and my feelings for them never reached the same depths as my feelings for you. So, while I'd love to be able to say with total honesty that I never miss you or think about you, that's just not true. Sometimes, I still miss you. Sometimes, I wish you were still around.

Still, with every passing hour, you're becoming less of a pathetic obsession I can't free myself from and more a memory of a really shitty situation I went through. Occasionally, it helps to imagine conversations we never had. I get to imagine saying all the shit I should've hit you with but kept to myself. After much thought, I've decided to get them out in writing, so I can better process what happened and maybe, possibly, let go of them for good. You know, cuz closure is a really good thing.

Here we go:

• "You know how I feel about you and you need to respect my feelings." - I was constantly walking on eggshells around you cuz you were so goddamn sensitive and easy to set off. The least you could've done is cares enough to use more tact and not blast me with shit you, in all likelihood, knew would hurt me. On a related...
• "I can't be someone you bitch to about your love life."  - You knew I wanted to be more than friends, so I have to believe you knew you were torturing me every time you'd whine to me about the loser shitbags you'd date. I get that friends need to feel safe talking to friends about everything, but I should've dug up enough spine to tell you your love life was out-of-bounds. It hurt enough knowing you were with all those assholes. I never should've let you rub it in like I did.
• "You're not the only person in this relationship who matters." - Relationships, be they friendships, family relations, romances or whatever, are never just about one person. If only one person is getting what they want out of the situation, then it's a situation that needs to end. Both parties' thoughts and feelings matter, and if you get put out by that fact then you need to be kicked to the curb. 

• "If we can't be together as boyfriend/girlfriend, I can't be your friend anymore." - Having to squelch the powerful emotions that accompany being in love with someone is some of the most hateful, damaging shit ever. Much better to take the pain of a lost friendship than to suffer the agony of not being able to be as close to someone as you want to be.
• "You don't value people." - Pretty self-explanatory but it always shocked me to see how little value you place on your relationships with people you said you felt close to. One slight trespass and you booted them, often with no explanation.
• "I can't be friends with you anymore." - You abandoned me but even if you hadn't, I don't think our friendship had much life left in it. I had had enough even before you left and I am convinced I would've walked away sooner or later. But I shouldn't have walked the way I did, without telling you why I was done. I deserved more closure to our friendship but so did you. I should've told you what it was about you that drove me away. I should've expressed how you made me feel, both the bad and the good. I used to believe I never owed you an explanation but if I could do it over again, I would have told you why it was ending.

There are a lot of other things I should've said to you, but those are the important ones. There are things I wish you'd have said, too. But that time has passed, I've changed a lot since then and God knows where you are now or what you're doing. Where ever you are, I sincerely hope you're happy and that you've found what you were looking for. Or at least that you found a place to live that will let you keep a dog.