Fiction.
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I wish this story had a happy ending. I wish I could tell you we could live happily ever after.
This is one of those cases where the nicest thing I could do right now is lie. I’m good at lying. I wouldn’t need to use the old cliches. I wouldn’t need to try to tell you it’s not you, but me, or that we can still be friends. I could even say something that makes you think it’s all me, that I’m the one with issues, and perhaps you’d worry about me, but your feelings would be spared. But I’ve always had a penchant for honesty.
When I first met you, I adored you. I adored that you listened to Muse and captured the beauty of the world around you on film. I adored the way you greeted everyone with a smile and charm. Most of all, I adored the way you spun lyrics about the women you adored, and I hoped that one day I would be worthy of your words.
That was two years ago, and we’ve been together for a year and a half now. And now I’m ready to let you go.
I have learned the dark sides of the things I loved about you. I’ve learned that your charm is actually egotism and that behind your smiles is a deep hatred for humanity. I’ve learned that your photography, while skillful, is simply a mechanism for you to one-up others so you can criticize the “hobbyists” and feed your ego even more.
And I never got my damn song.
But none of that is why I’m breaking up with you. It’s not the ego, or the criticism, or the many disappointments you’ve given me over the last eighteen months. The truth is that I hate the person I am with you.
I hate trying to be good enough. I hate seeing you scoff every time you ask to see my photography and wondering if I’ll ever manage to match your standards. I hate feeling like I’m wasting my time when you tell me there’s nothing I can do with my major, or that I have no chance “breaking through” in my hobbies. I hate having to stay silent when you criticize my friends. I hate being with you and wondering if I can trust you when we’re apart.
I miss who I was before I had you. I miss hoping and wishing and dreaming, and I miss loving myself.
You’ve taken the life from me, and now I want you out of my life.
I wish I could tell you this is going to be easy. I wish I could tell you I’ll be over you in a week and that you’ll be over me sooner, but I know you’ve called me “the only girl I’ve ever loved.” I wish I could comfort you in your upcoming sadness, and let you know it’s hard for me to get over you, too.
But it’s not. My challenge isn’t getting over you. My challenge is finding myself again.
It will be hard. It will hurt. I will hate you, and if you’re smart, you’ll hate me more and you won’t have to feel your pain as self-hatred. I will lose it more than once and let teardrops fall for every piece of me that was smothered by you, and I will hope you don’t shed any over me.
I hope you were lying when you told me you loved me. This will be so much easier for you if you were.
If you weren’t, I want you to remember you can still live happily ever after. You can fall in love again, or you can live happily alone. You can write the songs you didn’t write for me for other women and learn to really love your photography again.
Remember that people change. That means you can move past this, and that means that I can be okay, too.
Really, it’s that change that brought us here. I truly loved you in the beginning, and in some ways I still do, but we have changed and I can no longer stand you.
It is a cruel thing that they tell us, that relationships are meant to last forever. Not even people do. I was different two years ago, and I loved a different you. Why were we foolish enough to think the people we would become would always love each other? Even if we did, why were we foolish enough to think the people we would become would always be good for each other?
Because I was full of dreams and wishes and hopes back then, and you’ve always played the optimist.
They’re crushed now. You are nothing I wanted you to be, and hopefully, you’ll soon find I was nothing you wanted either.
Have a happily ever after. This story can still have a happy ending. But this chapter can’t.
