What You Don't Understand
// An Open Letter To The Person Who Broke Me //
An Open Letter to the Person Who Broke Me
It’s been months, I still think of it, it still hurts, and unfortunately I can’t say that I don’t love you anymore, because that’s not how true love works. True love isn’t perfect, and it doesn’t always work, but it doesn’t go away. Because if you truly fell for someone, you can’t unlove them. Even when it ends, there is always a piece there, otherwise the love wasn’t true and pure. If you can say “I don’t love you anymore,” then you never loved that person in the first place.
What you don’t understand is that because I felt this way about you and you didn’t about me, this will hurt me for so much longer than it will hurt you. You’ll completely forget about me before I even can finally get over the pain of it. I even still feel the pain of some past relationships, because you have not been the first to do something terrible to me. I rely on these memories of hurt because they help me make better choices about the path in front of me.
I am not angry with you for not feeling the same way about me. That cannot be helped, and it is no one’s fault. What is your fault, is how you chose to deal with your feelings and mine. We weren’t together for a few weeks or a few months, we were together for over a year. And yet you chose to conceal your waning feelings for me while mine only grew.
What you don’t understand is how after so much time, what you did was not just “making the best decision for yourself,” it was being selfish. And they are not always one and the same. You ran away from what you should have done, because you were scared. You told me you weren’t, but I already know you’re a liar.
You were selfish in concealing your feelings, using dating apps behind my back and taking the second chances I gave you just to do it again, even when I explained how it made me uncomfortable. I asked you if it was something to be worried about. You said it wasn’t; you lied.
You were selfish in taking advantage of my good heart. A girl who fell in love with you and wanted things to work, so she would ask you to try again and give you chances you didn’t deserve, because you never even used those opportunities to change. I believed in you, and I believed in us. I had gotten to the point where I valued you and your opinion on the same level as my own. And you used that to criticize me without giving me any kind of compliments on other things to balance it. All I heard about myself from you was what I could improve, and never about things that I already did well. The scale tipped toward having a negative image of myself and somehow I still held on, because for some fucking reason, I loved you more than I have ever loved anyone.
You kept me around because it was nice to have a kind, oblivious girl around who made you feel like you were hot shit. And maybe because it was easier to get taken care of, free food, free attention, free sex rather than putting in the effort to convince someone else that you were worth the hookup, trying to bring home a new girl every weekend. A girlfriend, a status symbol. And then you got bored.
What you don’t understand is that how you left me was not better for both of us. It was better for you, the easy way out. More than a year of me loving you, of memories we created, and you left me through text messages and a phone call. You couldn’t even have the decency to break up with me in person. Someone who loved you wholeheartedly and left no part of herself hidden. You should have faced me like a man who takes the burden of breaking a girl’s heart upon himself, and maybe I could still have retained some respect for you. Maybe somewhere in the future we could have even been friends.
But now, the love I have for you is tainted with your disrespect for my feelings, your selfishness, your dishonesty, and your cowardice. I cannot even trust you with my friendship, because you care about nothing but yourself. You could give me that bullshit about “growing yourself” all day and I would never believe it for an instant with these choices you’ve made. You did not grow into a better person for breaking my heart the way you did. You took steps backward, further into immaturity and cutting off your own growth. You could tell me a million times that you still care for me and that this is better for us, and I will never believe you.
What you don’t understand is that if you had cared for me and respected my feelings at all, you would not have done things this way, and I would understand you.
As long as you believe that what you did to me was for the better, to run away from me without dealing with it properly, to run away from anyone without having respect for their feelings, then you will never understand my feelings for you. And you will be alone. Someone may share their body with you, but I hope with all my broken heart that no girl makes the same mistake of sharing her heart with you as long as this is the type of person you are.
As for me, now I know better. Because of your disrespect to me, I have more respect for myself. I cannot unlove you, but I respect myself too much now to ever let those feelings out again. You will never experience them from me again, even if you were to beg me on your knees. I will never be unkind to you, but I will never respect you or believe you ever again. You will never experience a love like I gave you until your growth is also better for the world of people around you as well as for yourself. That is truly growing.
Trees grow bigger for themselves as an organism, but they also take in toxins and turn them into oxygen for others to breathe. Their growth offers shelter to creatures and stability to the earth below. This growth is not selfish like your backward route of cowardice.
Even with this pain, I can now grow. I can feel the pain until it is numb and the shrapnel in my heart no longer causes me to bleed. I must live with these broken pieces, but it makes me stronger. I can now make better choices because of your dishonest ones, and I will be a better person. I can fix my own broken heart. And someone will come along and love me and my bandaged heart in the same way that I can love them.
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