Lovers, Once.

Lover,

I have dreamed of a hundred different ways of writing and publishing this love letter. I like everything to have a closing ceremony. This, my marker for the intentional end of an era, is the spell I have cast. My blessing to the lovely romantic era to come.

I imagine pinning one last love letter to you. To all the boys I used to love, still love. Still have some sharpness for.

I felt so strongly that writing my experience for what it was, what has been, would be just the balm of closure I needed to softly welcome a new time of abundance.

In my search for the right words, I came in touch with my anger all over again. My love letters, my righteous ritual ending to a decade of pain, turning on me. Far from sweet and poetic. The truth of my last ten years of love is dark at its core. And while I intended kind and true words, something to take the bitter bite out of it all, I found more rage. More disappointment in how it had all gone.

Standing in the present with wisdom earned through my darkest days of romance, I saw even more of what I couldn’t see then. That many of you, I had no business messing with. I knew it then in a whisper, but it roars loudly now.

While I feel so free of harsh judgment for myself, there are so many things I never spoke that make so much sense to me now. Sadly, some of you hated me, and hate me still.

When I daydream of love to come, my lovers are so much more patient. And adoring of me. Far beyond being an emotional container for all of their unsorted feelings. I am cherished for my heart and wit and brilliance, openly, never a secret they’re keeping to themselves. They never struggle to celebrate my light.

So when I look back at times when my star was shining brightly, and I see clearly how much it challenged you to be happy for me, it leaves a sickening feeling. One of many I’m leaving behind.

Looking back meant also confronting my own self-abandonment. The depth and severity of it. So clear in contrast to your emotional availability to me. In this way, we were a perfect pair. My insistence on showing up grandly for you, despite my very limited capacity to do so, paired with your comfort and delight in watching me, took us as far as we could go.

It was not until my codependency ran aground on my personal finances, or my extreme need for comfort and emotional depth following death and loss and grief, that I discovered you had nearly no discernible ability to hold space for me. Not in the way I had always done for you.

My bringing this forward should have elicited a loving response, where deep love had found a home. But mostly, you were angry that I highlighted this contrast at all. Angry that I was pulling back in response while doing nothing to fulfill the things I clearly expressed needing to move forward.

My needs, and every way I tried to express them, upset the balance of our previously codependent connection. And my truth is that you never forgave me for animating myself and my desires in a way that called our connection into question.

You scowled, and yelled, and tucked your tail. And then the story of my villainy grew.

In my reflections, I had to fight to anchor this as a love letter, while most of what I was feeling was unlovely. I really did try to hold the good times dear, but they were sour next to my realization of how we lasted at my expense.

I’m at least able to witness myself as more than a victim. I was a willing participant. That was how much having you meant to me. I was accepting, even eager, to keep everything going for the hope that one day you could love me back in the same self-sacrificing way.

Today, I’m happy that you’re not built like that. It’s not a healthy love. I’m glad that you may never have to experience someone’s apathy. Them settling for you. Or having to chase them and respond to failure by trying to give more. It’s a sickness.

But through our connection, I got to the root of why I allowed it. And why it was good enough for me. I learned so much about what I truly desire while being actively starved of it. Who knows if I could have come to know it any other way? I actually think it’s fortunate that I don’t have to. This set of scars will do.

I’ve asked myself, in the closing of this chapter, whether there were experiences I was sad to let go. The truth is there are many things. We had our own language. Our shared memories around things we both genuinely loved. Good hugs. Our familiarity with one another’s experiences.

I struggled in the early part of this decade with opening up again after my first heartbreak. The rage I felt, and feel still, from the gaslighting and emotional abuse could last me an entire lifetime. But I’ll cherish my gifts from this time forever. I grew out of hiding the deepest parts of myself. And though not all of me always felt welcome, I still learned to show up as myself without masking as time pressed on.

Even as we parted, I was sad to let go of the fragments of safety I felt with you, even if they weren’t the full measure of what I needed. I told myself it was better than nothing, and I definitely grieved the loss of it as we stepped into a new unknown.

If you believe your current connection is the best you can do, any shift in that connection hurts. No longer laughing together, sharing meals, watching a good show. It all still pains me a bit to consider what could have been if everything else hadn’t been so tough to bear.

The truth is that I don’t have good tolerance for emotional immaturity anymore. I know I can love any so-called good man through it. But that doesn’t mean he would ever be right for me.

A jealous man will never be right for me. Someone who isn’t excited to spend time or travel with me will never be right for me. Someone who can’t articulate what they want to experience in connection with me. Not for me. Gaslighting. Not for me. Doesn’t know what he wants. Not for me. Can’t take feedback. Not for me. Consistently emotionally dysregulated. Not my guy. Doesn’t take accountability or apologize. Not for me.

And I’m not saying anyone like this isn’t worthy of love and connection. But I know I can’t experience the type of connection I really want with someone who has no ability to talk through these things without anyone getting mean, self-destructive, or violent. I don’t have the capacity for people that abandon us the moment it’s time to talk about something real.

For everything I can love and appreciate about a person, it’ll never surpass my need for security with someone who speaks to, and believes in, the need for depth and clarity in our relationship.

So where is the love now?

I feel like I’ve lived so fully in my resentments, especially after having denied them for so long. I gave my spite a microphone. Naming what I felt about the narcissism and neglect.

As I near forty, I finally found a clearing. One where I could let the coldest and sharpest parts of our experience live on the outskirts, and lift up in gratitude what was golden about us.

Spite has been a sort of comfort long enough. And I’m laying it aside not to forget the dark, but in service of attracting more light. I don’t want everything I hated about love in the last decade to rule the next.

I set an intention to see it all in a glow that lifted me. Elevated my growth, my newfound discernment, my ability to be clear about what I want to experience. And I place these things at the center of my heart.

And it’s been hard because I still see you. Around town, living in my Instagram stories. Our creative worlds still intertwined. Some of you still trying to win back what was lost in my disappointment. Some with an uncomfortable amount of surveillance. Uncomfortable because I know your gaze. Uncomfortable because I know what sparks the spite in you. Some still with jealous eyes.

Sometimes it still brings up a lot.

But I decided to alchemize it for my good. To turn it all into the simple, tragic love story that it’s been. And to practice letting it be. To make art of it and leave it alone.

I’m excited for the love and the lovers to come. For deep conversations and handholding. And warm sentiments that don’t stop at the bedroom door. To love even more fiercely, but with my head on, and my eyes open, and my heart spread wide.

And because I have loved you, and love you still, I wanted the story, the answer to the inevitable question of what went so wrong before, to be more than that I was just your fuckable security blanket.

I want a truth that honors the time. The good and the not so good. Fully, in the romantic and moody and lived-in way that I now experience us.

That we were lovers once.

But now no more.

I love you.

And I wish you well.

Enjoy ✨

 

Featured photograph by David Williams Photography (@david_williams_photography). Used with permission.