To The One Who Took Me Back (Even Though I Was With Someone Else)

I’m sorry. You are the love of my life and I left you for someone else. I was temped by the draw of something new, something different. I know it’s hardly an excuse, but I needed this time to realize you were the one for me all along.

It had been six years, and I was becoming bored and restless. You should have expected it, you had to have noticed my wandering eye. You must have known because you let me go without a fight. Our last week together was special and something I’ll never forget. I saw a side of you that I had never seen before, and in some ways, it felt like I was looking at you again for the very first time.

But then it was over, I packed my car, took all my things, and drove across the country to start my new life.

Don’t hate me for saying this, but at first, she was everything you were not. She’s a quiet kind of beautiful, as if a painter had created her with delicate, pastel-tinted strokes of his brush. You’re beautiful too, but it’s a different kind.

You try so very hard and your appeal is flashy, neon, blinding. It’s like you’re always putting on a show, and I hate to say it, but it started to all feel so pretentious. She is a natural wonder- it was so easy to get lost in her curves and edges, the rough landscape of her perfectly imperfect being.

It was also so much healthier being with her. I never felt so good about myself. I know you love your Sunday morning bagels and pizza at 3 a.m., but for the first time, I was breathing fresh air, buying organic, and spending my Sunday mornings at a farmer’s market.

She’s also temperate, a kind of quiet calm that I never felt with you. Your moods swing from fiery hot to cold and callous within a matter of days, hours. Her worst quality is a foggy mood each morning, but even that burns off in no time at all.

But yet, you drew me back as I always suspected you would. What started as exciting and refreshing with her quickly became rote and boring. Although I thought I’d be much happier, her little quirks soon became glaring flaws that I couldn’t overlook. Being with her eventually became claustrophobic, like there was never any space. If I went too far in one direction I knew I’d reach the end of her existence. She’s impossible to navigate. Her peaks and valleys blend together and I found myself getting lost. I yearned for the days when I knew every angle of you, knew which way was East and which was West.

You and I always had such fun, we shared experiences that could never be duplicated. I loved spontaneously venturing out at 2 a.m., on the hunt for some ice cream, or wandering aimlessly on a Saturday with no destination in mind but an adventure in store nonetheless. There is something freeing about knowing you’re never trapped in one place with someone, that you can live your life every moment of every day.

In the end, I realized you and I were meant to be all along. This tryst was fun at first, but it eventually felt like retiring, like going to sleep far earlier than I should have for someone with so much life to live. I promise I’ll never leave you again. You stood by me time and again through many of the difficult moments in my life. You pushed me to my limits but always to my own benefit- I never appreciated you the way you deserved. I’m so grateful you’ve accepted me back with open arms and, in a way, it feels like I never left at all. New York City, you are my one and only. I never should have left you for San Francisco.