Dear Ex Love,

Sometimes, I forget that I’m not supposed to be in love with you anymore.

I walk past your favorite food in the grocery store and think I’d like to buy it for you for dinner. Then I remember I’m not supposed to love you anymore.

I drive by the donut shop on Eight Street and remember when we used to sit there together and eat the hot donuts early in the morning. My heart flutters and I feel those butterflies inside. Then I remember I’m not supposed to love you anymore.

I drive home to the house we used to share, see your car in the drive, and I get excited to see you. Then I remember I’m not supposed to love you anymore.

The problem is, I do love you. I mean, I know we haven’t been able to work things out. I know that life has lead us in different directions and we’ve grown apart. I know that we aren’t meant to be together forever.

But I can’t help but remember the feelings, the love, the ‘real’ between us. It’s not like love can turn on a switch and turn it back off again at a whim. I’m reminded of Kenny Rogers’ song, “I can’t unthink about you. I can’t unfeel your touch…” It’s true. I can’t unlove you.

So when you’re packing up our lives and moving part of it away from me, I hope you know that somewhere in the pictures, the remnants, the memories… there, buried beneath all that past, is my love for you.

And maybe, when it comes time to divide up his and hers, yours and mine, and we walk away from the singular life we were supposed to live together, until death, and both begin living our new lives, separately, we can be kind to each other.

Maybe through the lawyers, the courts, the judges, the mediation and separation of property, we can look fondly at each other and remember the love, honor it.

Because even though I know we aren’t going to be together anymore, my heart hasn’t quite figured out yet that I’m not supposed to love you anymore. Somewhere inside of you, I know you feel the same way. Just because we can’t be together anymore doesn’t mean we have to release the love, the one good thing that was between us.

I learned a long time ago that sometimes love just isn’t enough. It wasn’t for us. Still, I need to believe that love matters, even if it’s not enough to hold together.

Someday, maybe I’ll look back and remember that I once loved you. It’s going to be awhile before that happens though, because right now, my heart just doesn’t understand yet that I’m not supposed to love you anymore.

Love,
Your soon to be ex wife

Dear you,

When you got off work that night, I expected you to come home, like you always did.

But you didn’t.

Three days later, me frantic with worry and having called all your friends and family, you finally called me. I’ll never forget those words, “I can’t do this anymore.”

Did you take that line from one of the cheesy nighttime soap opera type dramas you used to watch all night long instead of talking to me? Maybe you heard that line on one of the sim-type video games you played all day long instead of being a part of the household, a part of the family.

I don’t know where the line came from, and even more than that, I’m not sure what you meant by, “I can’t do this anymore.”

Do what? You can’t sit around all day while I wait on your hand and foot, working 12 plus hours per day, while you work your 20 hour per week part-time job? Or maybe it’s that you can’t sit around and do nothing but eat my home cooked meals? Or maybe you are so worn out from all the lovemaking we weren’t doing?

Really, what exactly was it that you couldn’t do anymore?

So then, without even talking to me about what was going on, where you were going, who you were going to live with… nothing, you come by, tell me you wanted to pick up your things. I sat on the bed, watching you pack your clothes, numb, cold. Ice.

“Are you going to help me pack?” you asked.

Are you serious? “No,” I said, choking back tears, “if you’re going to do this, you’re doing it on your own.”

It would be the first thing you did all by yourself in our entire relationship.

If I’d known then what I know now, I wouldn’t only have helped you pack, I would have asked you to leave sooner.

You walked out the door, but you didn’t walk out of my life. Oh, how I wish you had.

A few months later, in a phone call, you had the nerve to say, “I guess we both made mistakes.”

Was that your version of closure? Trying to get me to take some blame? No, I didn’t make mistakes. I had and have nothing to apologize for.

I did nothing wrong.

I held you when you cried. I initiated sexual activity while you rejected me. I cooked for you. I cleaned for you. I washed your clothes and had them ready for work. I made and packed your lunches for your part-time job. I waited on your hand and foot, doing all the things a ‘good little wife’ would do. I listened to every story. I laughed at every joke. I loved you the best way I knew how.

The only thing you could accuse me of doing wrong was working too much, but with a growing family, and you only having a part-time job, someone had to pay the bills.

That someone was me.

So you’ve come and gone, moved on to the person you cheated on me with, and likely have moved on to the next person you cheated with too.

Nothing of you remains in my house, my life, my heart.

But still, I think of you. There’s no love behind it. There is, however, a residual sadness… a sadness I cannot explain and do not understand. A sadness I do not choose to touch. And yet, it lingers there.

Unfinished business.

There is no closure. It’s a self-destructive thing that I won’t give you closure, because by failing to give you closure, I deny myself that closure too.

Though I’ve moved on, though I am happy, though I’m finally with my heart’s desire whom I love so very much, I still can’t give you the one thing you need and want.

Apparently, I couldn’t give it to you when we were together, so now we aren’t together. Now that we aren’t together, I refuse to give you want you want.

You don’t deserve it.

But I do want to thank you. Thank you for making the choice to leave, a choice I should have made but wasn’t strong enough to do. My life has become infinitely better since.

Goodbye,
Me

—

The writer of this piece wishes to remain anonymous, but will be reading your comments, so please leave some!

Interestingly enough, this letter was original written and not truly intended to be given to the recipient.As fate would have it, the universe intervened and these two friends were reunited, though it was never quite the same. After the reunion, this letter was shared, in part, with the recipient. After this letter was shared, a second letter was written.

The first letter is available here on the blog. The second part of this letter, the conclusion of the story of this friendship, will only be available in the print collection when it comes out.

We will update with more information about this story before the Unsent Letters Volume One book is released. Thank you, Lindsay, for sharing your heart with us all.

Dear Amisa,

A year ago, when there was still a gaping place in my heart where you once lived, I wrote this to you:

Dear Former Best Friend (for reasons I don‘t know),

Yep, I still exist. Try as you might to forget your former life and everyone in it, I’m still here. I still think about you far more often than I’d like. For the record, I’m not crazy psycho or anything. Little things, like last night when I sang karaoke to She’s In Love With the Boy by myself instead of a part of our little duet, make you pop into my mind again. Every time you come crawling back into my thoughts, it rips open the hole in my heart I thought had healed.

It has been three years since I last heard from you. Three years ago, you were my sister-in-law, but so much more than that. You were my best friend. My confidant. Someone who cried and laughed with me and always seemed to know the perfect thing to say to make me smile. I would never in a million… no, umpteen billion years have guessed you could turn your back on me and cut me out of your life forever, without so much as a warning or explanation as to why.

I had a dream about you the other night. In my dream, you came back, and you and Derek were still divorced. At first, I was overjoyed to have my best friend back, but it didn’t take long before realization flooded my body. You had hurt me.

“I hate you!” I spat into your face.

Ever the people-pleaser, even in my dreams, I took it back immediately and simply explained the pain you had caused me. In the end, I forgave you. That forgiveness felt freeing in my dream, like a weight had been released from my heart, and it persisted even after I awoke. This feeling of reconciliation with my own pain made me want to write you, but I knew better. Many times I tried to contact you in these past years. No matter how friendly my letter was, you never responded.

When are you going to break this silence? It destroys my soul to know you’re out there and I don’t know how you are, or what’s going on in your life. What hurts me more is that I care deeply for you, and I can only assume from your actions that you feel nothing for me. It boggles my mind how you could flip the switch between, “You’re like a sister to me, Lindsay,” and, “You’re dead to me,” with seemingly no remorse.

I am mad at myself for even thinking about you anymore, wasting my precious thoughts on someone who has caused me such pain. I don’t want to think about you. I don’t want to wonder how you’re doing or if I’ll ever see you again. I hate wondering what it would be like if we did bump into one another. I wonder if you would ignore me, or run up and hug me. In case you’re wondering, I would prefer the hug. I hate this, I hate this distance. I hate thinking that you’re out there somewhere, possibly mad at me for reasons I cannot comprehend.

Please forgive me for whatever I did to cause this silence. Please know that if I said anything that made you think I was anything but supportive of you, that I didn’t mean it. And I’m not talking about you and Derek. That’s done, it’s over, you guys have moved on and I have too. Derek is my brother-in-law and I love him, but I know as well as both of you, that it takes two people to ruin a marriage. What I’m talking about here is you and me.

I accept that we’re never going to be best friends again, but can we at least be on talking terms? I am not going to disappear simply because you don’t talk to me, Amisa. I am still here, and despite my best efforts to convince myself you don’t deserve my love, I still care about you and your happiness. I know it’s painful and weird that I’m a part of your ex-family, but we’re all still here. Your name pops up in conversations, and we get sad. It’s almost like you died, Mis, only you’re still walking around, safe and sound. But to us, to me, it’s like you don’t exist. We were used to talking to you all the time, especially Mom and me. Then all of the sudden, one day, *poof* it’s all gone, you’re gone, and you left us behind without even a goodbye.

I don’t do this. I don’t think about former friends this much. Most of my former friends were idiots anyway, not worth spending the extra time thinking about. But you are not in that category. I could tell you anything, Mis. You know stuff about me that most people don’t know. I trusted you with such personal information because I trusted you, and you let me down. The last letter I have from you was mean and hurtful. I held onto it until about a year ago and then decided I had harbored that upsetting memory long enough. But deleting the email didn’t delete you out of my mind.

Though sometimes I wish it had.

I don’t hate you. I’m not even mad at you. I’m completely over all of those feelings because life is too short to live it holding resentment for people you once loved. So here I am, I’m telling you I love you and I miss you and I want to be friends, or at least friendly acquaintances with you. I hope you can somehow feel the same.

I forgive you, Amisa. I forgive you for not giving me a reason why you decided to stop talking to me all of a sudden. I forgive you because you were hurting and maybe confused, and didn’t know who to trust. I forgive you because at one time I know you loved me like a sister. I know you did. And I felt the same way.

So here’s a letter I will never send to you. I’m not certain you deserve for me to send it to you. In fact, I don’t know if you deserve my friendship after all of the hurt and pain you’ve put me through. I guess I would merely like to know why, and it kills me that I will probably never have an answer to that question.

I hope you find happiness, Amisa. I hope you have figured out what was making you so incredibly unhappy. I hope you have done some intense soul searching, that you have been brought to your knees and gradually picked yourself up. I hope you’re stronger, I hope you’re happier.

I hope you truly did consider me as close to you as a sister. I hope that wasn’t a lie, because that’s how I felt about you. I will not send this letter to you, making me vulnerable yet again, pouring my heart out to you, only for you to ignore me once more. I can’t do that to myself anymore. You need to find me when you’re ready.

I pray someday, you will.

Love,
Lindsay

~~~

Lindsay Maddox is a freelance writer, humorist, and Mommy extraordinaire. She mainly produces nonfiction articles on parenting, but recently found her true love in fiction writing. Lindsay will be published in Elements of the Soul, a Short Story Anthology in 2009. Please visit her author’s website at: http://site.lindsaymaddox.com/