A Message for Her
How I try to keep going without that special someone.
When you just can’t get over someone.
When it’s been eight months and you still think about her every night before you go to bed.
My heart aches for her. I want to reach out. But I’ve been rejected so many times.
I’ve tried to make things right but they just can’t be mended. I need to accept this.
It’s hard because I’m hurting so much and there’s nothing I can really do about it. But listen to my sad playlists. And wait for time to heal me and to help me move on.
I tell myself constantly to take things one day at a time.
And maybe listening to my breakup playlist is bad for me.
But I feel that writing about it is a healthy coping mechanism. I’ve written poetry, a theater piece, and countless journal entries.
But now I thought I would write something concrete that I can share with the world. Because I know that I’m not the only one hurting over someone they’ve lost.
And every time I think that I’m over her — that I’ve made a step forward — the next day I’ll take two steps back.
I want to revisit the past.
Things used to be so good. I look at all the old pictures and videos and text messages that I didn’t delete.
Cause I think. I think about you.
Late at night, my thoughts go to you and I try so hard to make sense of it.
I know it was love, that it was real. It wasn’t a romantic relationship, but it was a breakup all the same. You were my second mother, my mentor, my boss, my friend. A confidant who I could tell everything to, who would advise me. A crazy light of inspiration who brightened my day every time we worked together.
We fought. And there was tension. It wasn’t perfect. Our relationship was flawed and in some ways — okay many ways — it was toxic. I needed you like a drug. And like a drug, you had harmful effects on me.
But you also formed me into a better, stronger person. You were there for me through it all, through my darkest times.
You helped me heal after my dad died. You listened to my cry after I was raped. You consoled me when I broke up with my fiancée.
You worried about me when you thought I wasn’t eating enough. When I almost fainted at work, you made me stay in the back and drove me home when the shift was over.
You cared. You loved me fiercely. You cried when I gave you a Mother’s Day card because I loved you so much. You were my mother.
And I’m crying as I write this.
Because how could I lose someone like you? I want you back. How did things go so wrong?
I ask myself this question every day. We distanced, we grew apart. You stopped working as often, I barely saw you.
I felt that you were getting too critical of me, that I couldn’t do anything right. I thought that you didn’t love me anymore.
And that’s the hardest part. Because you were my boss before everything else. You had to be critical and you showed me tough love. You had high expectations. And I was a loyal employee and you loved me and wanted me to be better.
I am hurting. I feel like my heart has broken over and over again for you. And I don’t want to believe that it’s over.
And the worst part is that you probably don’t even think about me anymore. That I’m hurting so much and you’re probably going on with your life as if I was never a part of it.
I went to France and we fought. I was gone and couldn’t make things right in person. You didn’t want to talk to me. And like that, it was over. It would be a year before I would see you again.
I cried and I cried and I stared up at the ceiling at night and I thought of you. How many poems and how many quotes about letting go do I need to journal before I actually do it?
My friends don’t understand how I’m still hung up on this. And I am confused too. I am lost and I feel a hole where you used to be.
And I still wonder if there’s a chance I can make things right. And I want to call you and talk to you and try to heal the wounds and get closure. Because things ended so badly and then they were just over with no resolution.
My friends tell me that this is sometimes how relationships end and that you won’t always be able to get closure.
But this is not enough for me. I need to talk to you again, if not to heal, to hear your voice one last time.
And I long to come back to work and to make things as they once were. I need you in my life.
But I don’t. That’s the thing. That I don’t.
I have been living without you for 8 months. I have been surviving. And the truth is I am almost definitely romanticizing our relationship after it’s over. I only focus on the good memories and leave everything else in the past.
After all, a few fights and a few disagreements won’t change the fact that you were my second mother. That should be unconditional love. But it was always on your terms.
You hurt me.
You kicked me down and made me feel like shit over and over again. And for what?
I constantly searched for your approval. And when I didn’t get it I would feel badly about myself.
I wish. I wish. I wish, what?
I wish I could rewind and talk to you in person and resolve this before I had left for France. I wish I could relive our best memories. I wish I could work with you again and laugh with you again and love you again.
But I still love you. I don’t think I ever stopped loving you. Our relationship was flawed, but it was raw and real and you fundamentally altered my life. I don’t know where I would be without you.
But now you are gone.
And now you are just somebody that I used to know. And I’m still not over you.
So how does this end? How do I get closure?
Maybe my friends are right, and I don’t. Maybe I muster up the courage to call you tomorrow and try and apologize for the past and all my fuck ups. And maybe one day you will find it in you to forgive me.
But for now, I guess all I can do is the thing I do best: Write.
I will write and write and write until I have no more words left to say.
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
