I’ve been waiting for you for so long. I honestly thought that because I spent all that time waiting, I had earned some part of you. It felt like I had worked for something, you know? Because I had been patient, I had been understanding when you would disappear for months at a time, that I would be rewarded for this behavior.

I don’t know where this train of thought came from.

I don’t own any part of you, nor should I expect to. I have grown up all on my own for a long time, I don’t know why I felt as if I needed to be there while you do the same. It’s your job to figure out how to be you, without me butting in and complicating things. You deserve the right to be holistically you, without anything from the past complicating that.

I want big things for you because I believe you are capable of them. I see you doing incredible things with your future, if you so choose. You can live wherever you want, do whatever you want, and nothing will stand in your way. The only thing that has ever stopped you before is yourself. If you can recognize this and fight past it, I truly believe you will be unstoppable.

This doesn’t mean I don’t care about you, or that I didn’t wish things were different. I’m just doing that thing you do when you love somebody, understanding that what is best for them isn’t necessarily what is going to make you the happiest. Long-term though, this might be the best thing for both of us.

I think we could make each other happy, but we never seem to quite match up. We’re always just a little skewed from the same path, never quite reaching the same end. There’s too much history, too many deeply rooted issues that we refuse to talk about. I’m not even sure you know that some of them exist.

Letting you go while you stand right in front of me will be difficult. I see what I want to see, I have these rose colored glasses shoved so far up the bridge of my nose I don’t even try and take them off. But it is to both of our benefits that I do. Perhaps one day our paths will cross again. But until that time, I want both of us to grow and learn, to become who we have always been destined to be. I want us to make this separation count.

Because I know we can make it count, so we will. We are both strong. We are both capable. And we are both meant to be something important in this world. Maybe, just for now, we are not meant to be those things together.