This Is From The Girl You Left Behind

For starters, let me say that I’m happy for you. Sincerely. You’ve picked up the pieces, moved on and made a life for yourself that is completely separate from me. And, for most of you, that life seems to include a “someone”. Someone who makes you smile. Someone for you to come home to. Someone to be a witness to all the little mundane things that make up your every day. Someone to love you in a way that I wasn’t capable of. For all of that, I congratulate you. I celebrate you. I raise my glass to the love that you’ve found – because you deserve it.

I mean, don’t we all deserve the unwavering love of another human being while we’re on this planet?

So, here’s the harder thing for me to admit: I’m jealous. This admission is not meant to be self-serving. I promise.

I’m not trying to say that I want you back or that I want another chance. What I’m trying to say is that it feels like everyone I once loved or who once loved me are finding their “forevers” and I’m not even capable of finding a “for now”. What’s more, it’s completely bizarre to me that people who – for a certain amount of time – knew every intimate detail about me are out there knowing someone else in the same way. Or maybe it’s not the “same” way. Maybe it’s different somehow – better, even. Maybe that’s why this new person is the person you’re supposed to be with instead of me.

Does it make me a bad person to be jealous of the new life you have built? Or am I just a person suffering from the standard fallibility that is the “human condition”? I may never know the answer.

I know I’m not blameless here. I realize there are very valid reasons that we are not together anymore. In some instances, I didn’t just lose you, but rather I pushed you away. I forced you out of my life. Because I was scared. Because it was easier than allowing myself to be completely cut open and exposed with another person. In other instances, we were a result of wrong place, wrong timing or a combination of the two.

And finally – the reason that stings the most – we were too young. The people that we were when we knew one another were not the people we were meant to become. And we had to go our separate ways to grow into those people. And by the time we did figure ourselves out, well, we just didn’t make sense anymore. I tell myself that we might’ve worked out if we had just met one another a little later. It’s always a bit less painful to think that it could’ve worked out given different circumstances.

Some days I am completely fine with the fact that you’re not here anymore. Some days I completely regret not knowing what we could have been. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from seeing you move on and find someone new it’s this: It’s hard to be happy for people who have found happiness without you – with someone who isn’t you.

But I’m trying. I’m really, really trying.