I Hope You Found What You’re Looking For

I hope you’re happy now, but I hope this not out of spite or passive aggressive ill-will. I hope you’re happy because it has finally become apparent to me how well-hidden real happiness can be, and how much searching you have left to find it.

It’s like when you’re looking for that one thing that you’ve misplaced, and you spend hours on end rummaging through your space just to find it, and by the time you’re done looking it looks like the earth turned upside-down, and you’ve found everything it is that you weren’t originally looking for. And then one day, when you’re not looking, when you’re not relentlessly searching from top to bottom, that one thing you’ve been looking for the entire time mysteriously appears.

When you were with me, I was the one thing you found that you weren’t originally looking for.

And when you found me, it was a nice surprise, but I wasn’t IT. I wasn’t that one thing you turned your world upside-down for, I was just something you found along the way. And I always felt like something was missing, and now I realize it’s because every moment we were together, you were looking for something else.

I couldn’t make you happy, not because I didn’t have enough love to give, or because I was in someway insufficiently unworthy, but because I wasn’t right for you. Because we weren’t right for each other. But at that time I thought we were. I thought I was that one thing you were looking for, and that’s why it hurt so bad when you left.

That’s why I woke up the next morning with my eyes swollen shut, I’ve never been a pretty cryer. And that’s why after an entire week of tears I became angry. Because the sadness can only last so long.

And after the pain of your departure hit me, I began to resent you.

I resented the way I thought you mislead me, and I resented the way I felt like maybe it was me who misunderstood your promises. Maybe it was me who expected too much. Maybe it was my fault for not seeing that I wasn’t what you set out to find.

But now that time has passed I realize it was not your fault or mine for a love that never grew. There’s not necessarily always one person at fault for a heart that’s been hurt.

Because it seems that the victim is always the person who was left, and never the one who leaves, but I think all along your heart was much more damaged than mine.

And I think the damage that your heart has clearly suffered prevents you from finding that one thing you’re looking for, because I don’t think you even know what that one thing is. I don’t think you’d recognize it even if you found it.

And as you continue to turn your world upside down in search of this special something, I can only hope that there are fewer hearts in the path of your destruction. I hope you’ve found what you’re looking for so that you can stop hurting everyone else along the way. And I hope that if you hurt her next, she makes the same realization I do. I hope she realizes that it’s not her heart that needs healing, it’s yours.