Thank You for Not Loving Me
Its not OK, but I accept that. I don’t blame you. I love you.
I love you. I’m not in love with you — I’m completely over that and like Taylor Swift sang we are never ever ever getting back together — but do I love you as a person? Absolutely.
You might not think so given how it ended, but I do. I understand why you treated me the way you did, why you started seeing someone else while telling me “I love you.” Its not OK, but I accept that. I don’t blame you. I love you.
You are one of my greatest teachers; how could I not love you? You showed me all the ways I wasn’t loving myself.
Before you, because of my abusive ex and too much time spent in the wrong relationships, I stayed single for a few years to work on myself. Casual dating was fun, but then you came along and changed everything. You were the opposite of the guys I had dated: reserved, age-appropriate, and brown like me.
Pouring my love into you felt so good. It felt nice to hold your hand and be tucked under your arm. I had forgotten how much I like cooking for a man; staying up late after your gigs to make you pancakes and biscuits and bacon jam made me feel like a woman in a way that other things didn’t. It was sweet to trust you with my secret hopes and dreams and be that person for you. It felt good to hear, “I love you.”
It wasn’t real though.
You didn’t love me and I didn’t love you either. I wanted you, I coveted you, but I didn’t love you.
I loved the potential of what could be. I loved the idea that someone else would love me so I wouldn’t have to take care of loving myself, so I could bypass dealing with all the things that hurt too much inside by slapping a Band-aid with your name on it, and skip to the happily ever after ending.
Knowing that it wasn’t real didn’t make it any easier to get over you. When I ended it with you for the umpteenth time, I fell into a deep depression. Depression didn’t seem like something that could touch me. I’ve survived abuse, trauma, and PTSD without getting depressed, so to feel depressed — and over you of all things — was a shock.
Breaking my heart against you over and over again broke me. No one could bring me out of it. I shut down and turned away from everyone and everything to sit in the despair over my broken dream of a life with you. I perched on the razor’s edge of losing myself.
I clawed out of depression by hanging on to the hope there was a treasure in this hot mess that hadn’t been found yet. As I came out of it, I saw how much power I gave you, choosing to give you the love I needed to give myself. I saw the wound and the belief beneath it: I thought I was such a bad person I didn’t deserve love.
Because of you, I decided to face my deepest weaknesses and flaws and figure out how to love the fuck out of them — because who could love all of me if I couldn’t do it first? Because of you, I made non-negotiables and let people meet me at my level or fall off. Because of you, I found deeper layers of humility, forgiveness, and gratitude.
Maybe I would have done it without you, but loving you put me on the path to blossoming into the woman I was meant to be.
There’s so much more to you, though, than being pain medicine. You’re special to me, even now. Your soft-spoken style, the smile you’d hide from most people, your old school ways of calls vs texts, movie dates instead of bar nights, a gentleman’s manners and long sweet kisses. I really do love you.
You invited me to feel, something I hadn’t done in a long time. You were the reason I stopped numbing my feelings with alcohol and meaningless flings. You gave me hope. You showed me I could let a man into my world again when I honestly didn’t think that would be possible. You helped me believe in love. You were my spark of light in the dark.
Thank you, for everything. Thank you for not loving me.
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