A typical story now, to set things straight, about how you take special people on a journey with you, even if you think you're setting them free.
Two years ago we broke up and it was the hardest decision I've ever had to make, for in doing so I decided to change the course of both our lives as we had pictured them.
We had tried to make it work, but the truth I had to confront was simply that I felt too young, too unsure of myself and the future to settle. It came to feel like my guilty secret, an infidelity to our mutual trust and bond, so that in the end it permeated all intimacy and made us strangers, where before we had been closest. I cannot tell you how that guilt weighed on me, or how I struggled to ignore that doubt. Talking to you only terrified me further, for I knew there was one way out of it and you said in no uncertain terms that my leaving you would break your heart.
But I did anyway, and it felt as much as that. But I had to act on it to stop the pain and stop dishonouring what we had before. I couldn't pretend I would come back soon, and I couldn't keep you my prisoner, waiting sadly, on the off chance that I would grow up and feel ready and sure. I didn't know I would. I didn't know anything, but it seemed like the right thing.
Although it broke my heart more than you could imagine, I felt in a way that I had freed you when we split. It was out in the open, and although you were hurting and struggled to understand my reasons, I knew it would be better for us both, and I think you must have done too, somewhere.
You said 'that's it for me now, I'm done' And in many ways my heart believed it, but common sense - my saviour all this time(!) - said that one so strong and sincere of emotion could not remain immune to loving another for long. To live is to love, we cannot help it!
Meanwhile, I spent two years doing exactly what I had to do. I worked hard, got a couple of promotions, travelled a little bit, made new friends. I kissed three guys and saw one of them a few times. Nothing special. I was drunk on every occasion!
When you would get in touch with me it would reassure me that you were still there, waiting and angry, and it gave me the strength to keep my resolve and see through whatever process was taking place. I didn't know where it was going but I knew it needed time, corny as that sounds, it is just the truth. Often I would listen to you on the radio, just to hear your voice. I'd tell myself you sounded happy. That didn't quite make me feel happy, because it was without me in your life, but it helped in a way, I guess.
I am not quite sure how else, save for the goodness I saw in those around me, I kept my resolve for so many things. To resist contacting you, unblinking. I ran and ran and ran and I starved myself a bit, as you do, and I worked so hard and flung myself at everything creative and frightening and new, just hurtling forwards, gaining speed, uncalculated but instinctive! Then at the end of last year I moved into a place on my own and that is when the pace changed. It all began to fall back into place, my health recovered, I made a home I felt happy in, and I am happy now.
You must have thought I was happy without you all this time! But no, not until now. I am happy in myself and know who I am and what I want and what I like and what I don't. I enjoy my own thoughts, my own company. If I feel lonely enough, I call up my friends. But I don't often feel lonely. I just call up a friend because I want to see them. That's the thing.
I count my blessings and I don't take them for granted. The world changed a while back and you can either hang there, paralysed, or get on with things and build your new reality. I don't take things for granted. I work hard, meet people, try new things and try to stay creative. It feels like the future is here now and this is what I want from it.
There are two people in a relationship, but can you see that all this is a journey I had to do alone. Had I dragged you through it, we might still be unresolved. And yes, you might argue that having the choice to take that journey (got to stop staying that now) is a luxury not many have, and many survive without, it would have happened anyway, and messed us up anyway.
You too, who always seemed so steady and sure to me, have changed too, in ways you wouldn't predict. Had we stayed together would you have bought your first flat?! You might still be running that dear, rattling Ford Ka up and down the motorway every weekend. You wouldn't have applied for a job that you got, that takes you all over the country to new and exciting ambitions. And you wouldn't have fallen for the new woman. The one you're in love with.
If you are happy now and you both love each other in equal measures, I wish you the happiness you deserve and a full and easy life together. Then it would be my turn to face the prospect of a future without my other, that I forced you to do.
I shall always love you, with or without you, as I know you will love me. We can't erase the past, and we can't call it wasted time. It was our time and it made us and it will always endure and change us, as every love shapes the next.
But if she mucks it up and you find yourself alone. I'd like to be the next woman you get to know. I'd like to fall in love with you again.
Just maybe, darling.
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