I still love you, Ex - but it doesn't hurt anymore!

Dear Ex,

It’s so weird to write to you after all these years! But I needed to. I need to write to you, to tell you how it is, to really see it all for myself in black & white. Because today is the last time I am going to write to you.

You are a beautiful part of my life.

There, I said it. I am gonna say it again because I do mean it – you are a beautiful part of my life. ‘Us’ didn’t end well. However, the time we spent together was beautiful.

For long after we separated, I tried telling myself that I hated you. That I was supposed to hate you. That I couldn’t love you anymore. That you were wrong. That you were wrong for me. That you didn’t care enough to apologize enough. That I could live without you. That I could not care about you. That I didn’t need you in my life. That I didn’t need your love in my life.

I used to cry all the time. In the shower. In the car. In my bed. Every time I was alone, I would cry. For those coupla months, my life was constant sadness, penetrated by nothing. Not even good moments.

Then one day someone asked me – ‘What if I had the power to erase him from your life. Would you want that?’ That left me thinking… would I?

Did I want to erase you from my life, completely? A loud voice said, of course yes! If I could, if I did, that would be great, wouldn’t it? It would mean I wouldn’t feel the pain any more. I wouldn’t feel the rigidity in my stomach, the emptiness in my heart, the callousness in my brain. But in doing so, I would also have to erase every single good thing. All the moments with you. Every moment, every word, every caring gesture, every look. Every moment, no matter how brief. The first moment I saw you, the first time you held me, the first time I watched you sleep, the first time I heard you cry. All of it. Gone. Forever. If someone told me i could get rid of the ugly stuff, but I’d lose all the other stuff too… Would I do it?

Would I? Hell no!

I cried. I cried because I still loved u. I cried because I pined for you. I cried because even though I had truly tried to stop loving you, I had failed, miserably.

And then in the middle of the tears, I began smiling. I remember feeling confused as hell when I realized that I was smiling. Realization had hit me – my love for you doesn’t have to make me sad. It can make me happy too. I can love you and smile about it. I can think of you fondly. I can look at our photos and smile and say “he’s one of the best things that has happened to me!”

It’s been months since then. It’s been months since I allowed myself to feel for you and to love you. And that allowed me to live. It was difficult in the beginning. But help made it easier, bearable.

I accepted that the pain of not being with you might never go away. Ever. But if I let myself love you, I only felt it sometimes, instead of allowing it to consume my entire life. And slowly, I began to feel at peace. I loved you. And I accepted that that’s the way it was going to be and slowly and gradually it helped me move on.

A few days back when we met at a friend’s wedding, I expected to feel something. Damn, I expected to be blown to smithereens. We were going to spend some time together. I had braced myself to ensure that I wouldn’t break down – at least in front of you. I knew what this would mean for the coming months – sleepless nights, gruesome nightmares and lonely days.

But, nothing. I looked at you and I felt nothing. I hugged you back and I felt nothing. I bid you goodbye and I still felt nothing. I decided it was time to face my demons and threw your things from my house and I still felt nothing.

Well, not nothing. I did feel an extremely small ounce of happiness on realizing that I wasn’t about to be crushed once again!

It’s better this way… where you are nothing more than a distant memory. Have I stopped loving you? Yes, and no. I haven’t stopped loving you in the literal sense. I still care for you. I would still stand by you if I was needed to. I still hope the best for you. But I don’t love you the way I did before. It’s a newfound place in my heart that I have created, just for you, in which you will exist. Always.

But I am moving on with my life. I can now once again love me. I have someone extremely special to thank too, but before that, I need to figure some stuff out.

I am sorry I blamed you for everything for these past years. That day, you lost yourself too. Unfortunately, I didn’t know how else to deal with it back then. Until now.

I hope someday you are able to find this peace too. I hope someday we meet and our hearts smile.

 

 

Until then,

Your friend!