Dear ____, (#7)

Hey,

So, I think I’m starting to make some inroads in understanding this.  It feels like I’ve come to this point before, but who the hell knows anymore.  You turned my life upside down, do you know that?  I’m not saying it angrily, it’s just the fact.  I genuinely thought I had my life under control, before you came in.  Well, before I invited you in, really.  I thought you were the answer to all my problems, and you showed me how wrong I am.

This, I think, is why I can’t get ahead of this.  The hurt and pain of all of this is what forced my eyes open.  I was delusional to think that I had control over anything.  Not only my life, but that I was actually healthy or capable of being healthy in a relationship. Beyond me though, beyond my petty problems, you opened so many doors to me – to find me, and to find all the things beyond me.  You pointed me back to loves I forgot I had as life eroded my willingness or ability to care for myself.  My obsession with you showed me my fear of being alone, hell my fear of being myself.

I wore so many masks with you, and shrouded myself in so much fear, insecurity, and anxiety, that I don’t even know who you dated.  I think the same is true of you.  I think I think too much.  So I come to the word that has always described you – bittersweet.  Losing you was the only way I’d start digging, but losing you makes me question the purpose of digging.  Last night, though, I had a wonderful thought as I was walking and staring at the clouds.

I’ve been professing how I still suffer, how I am still attached, how I still cannot let go.  In truth, I’m chained to a ghost.  I am chained to memory, to a past.  This means, then, I’m chained to nothing at all.  You don’t actually exist anymore in my reality.  I bring you back to life.  My imagination is the only thread that ties us together anymore.  You’ve moved on, and in many ways, I have too.  I’m more akin to a toddler who wants to show his mommy how he can walk than the woman you knew.  I think that is what frustrates me.  I want you to meet me again.  Lana Del Rey’s cover of Once Upon A Dream has become some sort of soundtrack to my broken heart, and I worry it feeds an illusion that will never pass.

Yet, thanks to you, there is the belief that anything can happen, because I expect nothing.  Infinite possibilities exist when you stop using your mind to attempt to construct and dictate your future.  There’s also the belief in the possibility that there is someone who will set me on fire even more than you, except their flames won’t burn or scar.  I am grateful to you, for all that I have and don’t have.  I’m grateful for the pain.  I think, though, I keep spending too much time trying to figure out why, as opposed to accepting it is.

I felt my heart open a crack in acknowledging that.  Thinking of you as a ghost makes me realize how much power I’ve given to the wrong side of the coin.  I’ve grown weary of missing you, and I’ve grown weary of criticizing myself or you.  It’s beyond irrelevant now.  So yes, I am grateful for all of these things.  I am equally hurt by these things.  Neither of this matters, though, because it is all done.  I am tired of fixing myself under some illusion that it will change a damn thing.  I’m tired of fixing myself, period.  The chaos I am, the chaos inside, is all part of a beautiful order.

I am stronger than letting myself get blown or bossed around by a ghost.  Even if it is one that cracked me like an egg.  Even if it is one that made me see where I had been blind.  Even if it is one that has pushed me beyond the reaches of sanity, into a place that made me scared of life itself.  I’m tired of being Van Gogh.  I’m tired of being Nietzsche.  I’m not the Juliet to your Romeo.  I’m tired of squandering my imagination on a future you’ve rejected, or a past I deny.

Thank you for cracking me.  I did the shattering on my own.

Love,

Rose