To the one I didn’t let go of
I won’t continue to avoid my present
Dear J,
They say grief has 5 stages: denial, bargaining, anger, sadness, and acceptance.
I have discovered a 6th, between anger and sadness:
Shame.
How could I have lost you?
How could I have screwed up so badly that we were done?
I hated myself for losing you. I hated myself for breaking my heart.
How arrogant I was. How stupid I was. How little I knew about how the rest of the world works. Out here, your loved ones leave you by choice.
What a fool I was to have not realized this.
My desperation to hold on to you was a way to avoid this reality
and replace it with one in which, if I try hard enough, if I do just the right mind reading and write just the right letters, I won't lose you.
And it worked. For a miracle of a year, it sort-of worked.
I got to bring you back to life.
But it was no life. It was fantasy fueled with a stream of breadcrumbs I savored like a feast.
I could not continue to avoid living.
I will always care about you, but I will no longer hold space for you.
I’m sorry if I led you to believe we were meant to be.
