Open Letter To Him

Where do I start?

I mean, I’m not even sure which version of you to pitch this letter to. The man I thought I knew? The deeply depressed man you have told me you are for most of this year? Or who you have turned out to be?

I’m going to have to go with what I know best…..

I can’t believe how much stress you put on yourself! Flitting between one persona when you talked to me, another for her?  Having to maintain an illusion for both of us. I can’t imagine it.  And all so alien to the man I actually fell in love with.

And that’s what I don’t understand. Don’t get me wrong here – I don’t want you back!! I do not love you anymore.

But I do miss the man I fell in love with. I miss him very much.

And I don’t think anyone who wasn’t actually there at the time can really grasp the “forever person” thing. Our children saw it. I mean, even Terry saw it. “Are you sure?” he asked when shit hit the fan. He just couldn’t comprehend us not being together.

And those things are what I have to use, to remind myself that what was there, between us, was actually real. I wasn’t deluding myself.

There are some things you just can’t fake. And they aren’t the spoken things, or the acts of doing something. Words can be lies. Acts can be a performance.
No, the unfake-able things are the “connection” between two people, what is transmitted by a touch, a kiss, a look. The “heart connection” we had.
Have you ever tried explaining that one to someone else? I have. And you get either a blank expression or they look puzzled or confused. You can see them trying to recall if they’ve felt it themselves. And quite obviously, they haven’t. Then they kind of brush it aside as if it’s irrelevent or you are talking rubbish.
But, I did find one person who knew exactly what I was talking about! And they got as excited as I did to find someone else who knew what it felt like!!
So I wasn’t imagining our heart connection either.
But it’s damned annoying that it’s still “open”. Even now I get ‘tugs’ that aren’t from me. I wonder what it is you are feeling when that happens. Or worse – what you are doing.

But what we shared was the most real anything could be. And very, very rare. Once in a lifetime rare.

And this is what I don’t understand, you see. How you could let that go. And why you couldn’t talk to me – despite me asking and pushing buttons etc. Because we talked about everything under the sun.

Just what was going on in February when you were in the Braunston area? Were you revisiting someone? Testing the water, perhaps?

And then …..you went missing.

That really wasn’t the way to deal with anything. You caused so much worry for so many people. People who really, genuinely loved and cared for you.

So much simpler to have just talked. Although I think I understand why you didn’t. You were scared.
Fear is the mind killer as they say.

I think you also told yourself I would react a certain way. Maybe because other people had before. I remember reading a text and thinking…..wtf? It was as if you were talking to someone else. But that text was definitely to me.

And you’d already lied. You probably thought it was already too late by then. But it wasn’t.

Gods, there are so many …..details/aspects/possibilities I could discuss here.

But why begin talking to me again when you did? After 6 weeks of silence. It was you who insisted we had a basis to talk, remember?

It was you who said you only felt we were over when I called you names. That only happened because I saw your profile, remember?!

So, was it guilt? Or because you couldn’t actually let me go completely?

There must have been a reason. A reason why you spent time talking to me on whatsapp. I mean those conversations take hours to say what could be said in 10 minutes on the phone.

And I turned myself inside out trying to help you recover from that “depression”. How real was that? I mean, the photos you sent me…..I could see misery in your face, in your eyes. Even the one you sent in July wearing your new tee shirt, that you said you had taken just for me.
Nothing like the way you used to be. Not the way you looked in that pic on a boating blog taken last year. You look like the man I was in love with on that one. Happy. Your eyes would smile unless you were in pain.
And in may when i saw you, you looked dreadful. You cried. But then its easy for you to cry, isn’t it.

And even into July you still had your “moments” most days, you said, when the tears would hit.

But remember when you were on holiday….when I put it to you that you loved me, as I sometimes did, and you agreed. I hadnt expected that reply. When I asked you said that expressing your emotions wasnt something you had been used to doing for a while, but you found you could agree it.
That was the first bit of real hope I had had in weeks.

And you really were there for me after my mum died. Talking to you on the phone…..it was as if we’d only spoken the day before – it came that easily. The next day you said it had done you good too. You always did like my voice.

Like you were “buzzing” after you saw me in May. You texted me first thing in the morning again for a while after that visit.

I was *so* much better in myself by the beginning of August. I’d got myself into a “what will be, will be” frame of mind where you were concerned. You had promised me “first dibs” when you got your libido back. Remember the mid-week break we discussed…was that in June or July? It sounded good, you said. It must have been June because we said we’d aim for August. And then the pot ran out so that meant it couldnt happen.

But yeah…..I’d made huge improvements by the beginning of August.
Then mum died. And you know everything that surrounded that. Enough to screw anyone up, wasnt it.
Then I crumpled. Lashed out. I couldn’t cope with trying to be there for you when I had my grief and all that other crap to cope with. And I felt so damned guilty that I was letting you down when you were just finally seeing the dr and trying to find a home mooring etc. I wrote that password protected blog post to you, to apologise. Separating you from the situation. It was the situation I couldnt cope with – not you. I even said ‘ get well then get back to me’!!!
Maybe I should un-password it like I did those others I wrote when you were missing.

It was only later that I clicked on. I wondered how you were so had a look at your forum. Something I never did because it was “your space” and I respected that.
But what I saw – hurt. Made it all fresh again.

I have wondered if things would have been different if they hadn’t given me those anti-depressants. I know now how much they actually seemed to make me worse. But hey…..you were there as I pulled out of them and you were *so* much more like your old self…..it was a joy, it really was.

But my reality of you is so much different to this other reality you had created and kept from me.

And I can only guess at your motivation, at what enabled you to keep that up for 6 whole months!!!

But there is a reason why you couldn’t end it back…..whenever. There is a reason why you couldn’t let me go completely. A reason why you couldn’t be honest with me. I know you said we had a bond, but…

If it’s what I suspect then you are the biggest bloody fool that ever walked the earth. You know this, don’t you.

But it’s done now. I don’t think I could even look at you now. Not knowing the full extent of your duplicity. And how you could involve someone else like that.

But as I said to you before, you might try to hide from your past, cover things up with lies and stories, you can even try and be philosophical about things or tell yourself you don’t care about stuff. But you DO  care about them.
But constantly running? You take yourself with you wherever you go. Winter always comes round and there will always be those times alone when it’s just you….and the thoughts in your head, and your memories.

You have to be true to yourself before you can be true to other people.

Near the beginning of our relationship you said – you “didn’t want to be that man”. I think you were being truer to yourself then than you had been for years. Something changed in you around the time of your birthday that year. Your topics of conversation focussed more on the bits of your life you told me in May that you should never have gotten into.

You should have just told me the truth. About everything. At every stage.

Go sort yourself out. Get therapy if you need to. Be brave.
Learn how to be alone and how to get through the dark winters of your soul. Because you really don’t like to be alone, do you. Despite what you say.

Whatever your ghosts really are…..lay them to rest. Because until you do, you are just going to keep on messing up. Yourself, your life and other people.
And I fell in love with a man who was SO much better than that.
Do it before it’s too late. And then you can be the man you want to be.

All this…..heartache would be so much easier to deal with if I could believe you are the psychopathic personality it’s been suggested you are. But I don’t believe that. Because of what we shared.

You need to know how much your friendship meant to me. I’d like to think mine meant as much to you. You did turn to me, but then, if it did…….things would be different, wouldn’t they. You’d have explained and apologised.

If you’d been honest earlier this year we could have still been friends. You wouldn’t have lost me. And I wouldn’t have lost you.