Of course I Internet searched you. I feel like that’s almost a given. Who wouldn’t want to know exactly what the other girl looks like, how old she is, how much better or worse off she is than I?

The thing is, I found out about you when we were still together.

We had a few fights prior, and as much as I tried to support him, he was in pain and needed to figure his life out. He was lost and I couldn’t help him. I realize that now, but of course at the time it’s a hard thing to accept. We were at a concert. He was drunk and of course all of his angry feelings came out, like they usually have in the past.

So he did the thing that made the most sense to hurt me – to start texting someone else. Then there you were, conveniently responding. It probably should have been a red flag that he was complaining about his girlfriend, but you listened and gave him the attention anyway. You even offered to grab a drink with him sometime. I happened to see these exchanges when I plugged in his phone after he passed out. I was hurt, but realized it was just a phone number. There was no name. I was too busy focusing on the issue at hand, which was our relationship and our happiness.

I was told you were a mistake. You were both drunk and you both apologized. For the next month, I forgot about you because I had bigger priorities. I was trying to help repair the 4 and a half-year relationship that was slowly slipping away.

Then you conveniently returned. Or did you really leave?

But you never really left my memory. You lingered there in the back of my mind, especially at my most vulnerable. Especially when I started trying to find any and every reason why things weren’t working out the way they were supposed to. Of course after reading things on the Internet and social media, I started to think things and go places I shouldn’t go and start making assumptions. Who wouldn’t though?

There was a moment though. A moment of weakness. I went for a drive. I started thinking about all of the good things in our relationship, and of course my mind wandered into all of the bad things as well. Especially things that led up to this point. I found myself driving over to his house to talk. 10:00 on a Monday night and his car wasn’t even there. Where else would someone be?

Right then and there I had a panic attack because I knew, he was with you.

Maybe he wasn’t, who knows, but I damn well believed he was. My intuition was correct though because he was. You guys slept together.

I don’t know how many times, but it happened.

Maybe you’re actually a really nice person. I like to believe the best in people, so I’d like to hope you actually are. I’d like to hope that you’re naive and realize your purpose in this situation. Maybe you don’t even realize that he is rebound fucking you after falling out of a 4-year relationship that’s currently in limbo. Maybe you don’t realize that he’s having a crisis right now and feels the need to self-destruct. Maybe being in your early 20s, you can’t understand what it’s like to almost be 30 and feel completely lost with the direction that your life is going.

Maybe all you want is a good time. Maybe you don’t realize that you slept with him as his most vulnerable.

I’d like to hope that you don’t realize that you’ve shattered someone else into a million pieces and made them feel like the smallest thing in the universe. Made this other amazing girl who has never done a thing wrong but care about him feel that she isn’t good enough anymore. Made her feel like at your younger age you have something more to offer. I hope you don’t know that you’ve destroyed this girl and her spirit, her heart, and her ability to be able to trust and love again. 

If you do, well that’s another story.