Not for a second will I let anyone think I’m leaving because I don’t love you. Not for a second will I let anyone think that I’m choosing to close this door because it’s something that I want to do.

Not for a second will I pretend this is the outcome that I wanted. Not for a second will I pretend that this is how I thought things were going to be.

It was supposed to be me and you. For as long as I looked into my future I pictured doing it with you. I pictured the perfection. I pictured us as best friends.

I pictured an amazing life that I could deal with anything thrown my way as long as I had you.

Well, guess what, it didn’t work that way. I didn’t get my happy ending. The fairytale didn’t end with me and you.

Instead, it ended numerous times with me gasping for air as I cried in my car and sent you paragraphs wondering how you could do this to me, again.

You continued to let me down. Every single time things got good between us again you’d let me down. Every single time things started getting back to me and you that I fell in love with, you let me down.

I have put you first for as long as I can remember. I have put your wants and needs before mine for far too long.

I got so caught up in loving you and what it took to try and get the happy ending that I wanted that I forgot the most important part; how to love myself.

I lost myself in loving you. I wasn’t tending to my own wants and needs. I wasn’t doing what was best for me. I began doing whatever it took to hold on to the idea in my head that things would end with me and you.

But it’s time that I wake up.

It’s time that I wake up and realize that the person I fell in love with isn’t there anymore. The person I fell in love with who made me the center of their world and bent over backward for me left a long time ago.

In the meantime, I’ve been fighting for someone who isn’t there. I’ve been fighting so hard to get the old you back, that I lost the old me in the process.

I stopped loving myself. I stopped doing things for me. And it’s time that changes.

It’s time I learn to love myself again. It’s time I get the old me back.

So, no. I’m not leaving because I don’t love you. I’m leaving because it’s time that I learn to love myself more.