A Little Insight, A Little Letter, A Little Goodbye...........

I have come to the conclusion that because I cannot possible analyze why or how or what it is that you are feeling and you obviously are not going to cooperate and just tell me, that it’s time that I take a good hard look at what it was that we had. It’s time to decide, once and for all, the motives behind this crazy dance that we’re doing. As I sit here thinking about you, I try to decide why I’m holding on. Is it because that’s what I’ve always done? Because I’ve always clung to the last threads of love until they are so worn and ragged that they finally snap and there is no repairing them. Is it because I was used to truly believed that I could only be happy when I was one half of a partnership….one half being made whole by someone else. Or, finally, is it because I was in love with you......deep, uncontrollable, passionate, love.
You see, I’m the first to admit that I was never good at goodbyes. I am one of those people who seem to be in love with love and will love anyone, regardless of their caliber, just to be in that intoxicating state of mind. It’s like a drug. Or, maybe, a cover-up. Maybe it’s my way of trying to make people believe that I’m strong. Example, why yes, I have one of those. See, I stayed with the ex way too long; longer than was healthy really and mostly for the sake of hanging on. If I hung on, I could say “See, I toughed it out. What a trooper I am. I am so strong for staying there and doing the things I had to do to try to make it work.” It is only now, more than a year later, that I can honestly say that that was a bunch of bologna. I was too scared to leave. I was too afraid that I couldn’t make it on my own; which in the scope of things is ridiculous because I have proven time and time again that I can and do tend to thrive when I’m on my own. It’s only when I get mixed up in the issues of the heart that things start to go downhill. Now, I’m not saying that I stayed too long with you, because I was the one who left. I was the one who was MIA the last few weeks of our relationship. I was the one who became emotionally detached and callously unaware of anyone’s feelings other than my own. For the first time ever, mind you
Anyway, I digress. What I’m trying to figure out is why New Year’s Eve changed everything. Why, when I had lost all inkling of feeling toward you, were they brought back by seeing you in the clutches of a frizzy-haired, southern-accented, chic from Texas. Was it territorial? Maybe. Was it like someone coming along and stealing my favorite toy? Kind of. I have to admit that that night, when you kept saying all you have to do is say the word, I didn’t because I didn’t want to. Even that night, I didn’t feel anything but angry because you had the nerve to get over me. You were supposed to love me…..more than anything, no matter what…at least that’s what you had said, and now you were trotting around with someone else on your arm. I was irate to say the least. That’s when it happened. I started to think about what I had left behind. I started to think about what it was that I was losing.
I remembered all the great…no, amazing times that we had had and I thought I had made a mistake. I thought that I really had found love in your eyes. For the first time in my life, I had found someone who loved me for me. I loved the version of myself that I saw reflected in your eyes. You were someone who did all the things I had always thought I’d wanted. You told me I was beautiful, even first thing in the morning, and I knew that you meant it. You gave me back rubs and calf rubs and foot rubs after long nights at the restaurant. You even let me pick what we watched on tv. Except for college football on Saturday, but even then, I could manage to get the remote away from you and flip to HGTV. Basically, I ran the relationship…..but it wasn’t a dictatorship….until the end. It was give and take, but I always knew that I was in control.
That’s what makes me wonder. That’s what puts that seed of doubt in my mind. That’s what’s making me sit here and wonder if I was really in love with you, or if it was the idea of finding someone who was intoxicated with me, someone who loved me unconditionally; just like I had with so many others so many times in the past. And then, when I got the impression that I was losing that, I desperately had to get it back. Not so much you, but it. Like I’ve said so many times before, you were the one who lifted me up when my world was falling apart. You were the one who taught me what love is supposed to be at a time when I wasn’t even sure that it existed. You were the one who gave me hope, and for that, I do believe that I loved you, and I always will, but I need to distinguish between loving you because you showed me the way, showing me myself, and being in love with you. I think I’ve got the answer. A page and a half and there it is, right in front of me. I love you because you showed me how to love myself. You made me believe that I was worth my weight in gold and that settling is not an option.
I think that the best thing we could have done was left it at “no regrets” and turned around and walked away with nothing but the good memories. Instead, I’ve done my usual hanging on because I was confused about what it was that we had. I was confused about how I felt. I was confused about how I loved you, and I’ve gone and tainted what could have been preserved flawlessly on the pages of my memory as a beautiful experience. Hopefully, someday, we’ll be able to talk about things. Maybe we’ll even be able to look back on the experience as a whole and say that in the end, it all ended the way it should have and we are both better because of it, but until that day comes, I think I can finally say goodbye……