Here Is What My Ex Would Say In An Open Letter, If He Could Write For Shit

You knew, from the day we met, that I loved your hair. I loved the color, the cut (or whatever girls call it), and even the bangs you’ve had since forever… One night, you showed up at my house with my favorite donut in your hands, asking me if there was anything different about you that I could notice. Your eyes were sparkling. To this day, I don’t know why you changed the one thing I loved the most about your looks and seemed demonically happy about it.

With you, there was and still is a lot that I can’t wrap my mind around. Some nights I still catch myself trying to follow the traces you left behind, to understand why you left me with tears in your eyes or why I was so upset that I did everything in my power to hurt you. After all, I was relieved about the break up; I was happy that you were gone. But now it almost feels like I had been staring at the sun for a long time and am just trying to gain back my vision. A nagging voice – your voice – in my head, is telling me that I can’t leave even one question unanswered. It gives me a lump in my throat that everything seems less colorful and vaguely blurrier than it used to be; I, for some bizarre reason, feel empty without that blinding figure of sun alarming all my senses.

From day one, I have always told myself I want the simplest version of love; I just wanted black coffee when life gave me a soy, extra-hot, no-sugar cappuccino. When you came in to my life, I knew my metabolism would panic, not knowing how to handle you. As the brave man that I am, I took a sip and instantly loved you. From then on, you became my guilty pleasure, my go-to and favorite of all time. From day one, I got some unfortunate rashes, but kept going for you anyway. “It is worth it”, I thought, “at the end of the day, a little rash won’t kill me.” Too bad, we both discovered my severe soy allergy when we were way too into the relationship.

Just like your existence was, your absence is incredibly irritating too. Knowing that I told you that you could not be more than what you were, watching you transform to this loud, demanding woman feels like a slap in the face. The slap you almost landed on my face when I asked you to leave the room for translating the documents I could not even begin to comprehend. You threatened everything I knew and held onto, including my intelligence and confidence. I knew that would happen, but I wanted you anyway.

Even when you tried to leave me more than three times, because “you hated the person you’ve become,” I still wanted you to stay with me. I promised you that I would change and you promised me that you would not try to leave again. You lied. You left. Purposely accepted a job on the other side of the continent and told me this in vicious, alligator tears. We both cried. I commanded you to choose between the job and me, not noticing you chose anything but me the day you looked up that position.

After one of our many pillow-talks, I slipped and murmured that I knew the moment we met, you were the best-case scenario I could not end up with. Maybe that is how much I admired you; not knowing admiration is just a form of defeated envy. Envy is known for rooting from jealousy and it only feeds from the unfortunate, toxic resentment. At the times admiration weakens, resentment presents itself in the most destructive ways. I think that is what happened to us; after the first time you tried to leave my hand, I realized I could no longer fully have you, so I tried to tear you apart.

Now, you are gone to God knows where and I have a new girlfriend. In every way, she is superior to you. The only thing is, she is yet to say, “I love you” the way you did. In a way that alerted my every exposed, damaged nerve.