My friends
think I’m mad. Not for leaving — that, they’ve been encouraging me to do for a
long time — but for having stayed with you for so long. They could see that you
were smart, intelligent and charming enough in conversation. Everyone could see
the superficial qualities you possessed. But for me to have given so much of
myself to you over such an important chunk of my youth, that was insane. When I
told them that I was finally going to cut it off, my friends jumped with joy.
You’ll ask
me if I love you, and I do. You’ll give me all of these big, overdone speeches
about how much I mean to you and that I am so important to you that if we
happen to stop talking to each other you’d die- and that’s probably true,
actually. People won’t love me the same. They will love me more wholly, more
healthily, more meaningfully. Our love will become an unfortunate phase on a
timeline, something that I look back on and shake my head. You will be a
cautionary tale, and you know it. Even as you throw a dish and tell me that I
am the one to blame, that I am the crazy one here.
The truth is that I do love you. I am consumed by you, and
partially by how badly you treated me. I have grown accustomed to always being
told how other girls were far better than I am, that what I do is wrong, that I
should be doing this instead. It’s almost comforting to have someone there to
dictate your life, like your mother laying out your school clothes the night
before so you don’t have to think about it. But there is only so far I can get
with that kind of love, so much I can allow it to take over my life before I
realize that I am only doing myself a disservice. My parents would have never
embraced you. My girlfriends would have never forgiven you. And I am not
interested in torturing myself with questions relating to you and your
girlfriend, whether you love her or not? I’m sure you will. And maybe you’ll
manage to fool her for even longer than you did me.
Because I
know that my love for you is something fundamentally unhealthy, something that chips
away at my ego and saps at my self-confidence in order to grow something which
we all know isn’t going to last. It is an addiction like any other, something
that I am paying for with my personality and autonomy and future. The relation
with you came at a high cost. I picture myself staying in this relationship for
another year, another three years, the rest of my life — I hate what I see. I
hate how many parts of me I allow you to take with you when you walk out of the
room, how many opportunities I give up on so that you will believe I really
love you.
I love me
more. I love the idea of growing into someone who has her own apartment, her
own career, her own future that only she dictates. I want to meet the woman I
become when I free myself of shitty men like you, when I allow myself to make
mistakes and do all of the things that I would never be able to do with you.
You compared me with every single girl on earth because I think you are afraid
of what I’ll be without you. Maybe you think I’ll realize that I could do
better, or that I simply deserve better. Maybe you think I’ll look in the
mirror and notice that I’m beautiful.
I hate to be
the bearer of bad news, but that is already the case. Goodbye.
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