I don’t know what to say or where to start, I just need to vent. There are things I need to say that I know you’ll never hear and even if you did hear them, I know you’d never understand. Your mind and heart are not in a place where you can receive any of this and learn from it or progress. We haven’t spoken for two months now and I know it’ll be even longer if we both have our way.
There is a part of me that hates you passionately.
I hate every fiber of your being, the way you treated and spoke to me. I hate the way that you cast off my affections and commitment to you like they were a layer of dust and nothing more. I hate how I spent five years of my life trying to believe you were the one and you spent the majority of that time taking my every emotion for granted or invalidating my feelings. You seemed so shocked when I ended it for good it was almost laughable. You seemed to think that after all of these years I wouldn’t tire of being stepped on or chewed up and spit out by your depression and your egocentrism. Despite what you’re assuredly convincing yourself of now that I’m gone, I am a compassionate and thoughtful person. I am kind, empathetic, and considerate. I made a point of vocalizing and expressing my appreciation for every possible gesture you made toward me, as sparse as they were, and you told me that I was not grateful. You threw money at me when I asked for effort, bought me things to make up for thought or romance, and expected gratitude for nothing.
I hate that despite the words you fed me about feeling I was attractive and pretty you never failed to make me feel awful about myself in other ways, eventually even frankly stating the fact that I was too fat to be attractive once you started your love affair with the gym. Your soul-sucking emotional emptiness drained me faster than I could ever replenish my own well being; you said you sought to make me happy despite only doing so because you knew no other way to feel happy than by trying to please me … yet you only grew more angry and more desperate when your best attempts left you still empty and ever broken inside. I hate the way that, even now, the thought of those days and nights where I cried myself to sleep because I was never enough to make you happy fills me with nausea and fear. You instilled in me a sense of unworthiness rivaled only by my step parents. Some days I wish you had actually hit me so I’d have a reason to dread you the way I do, to validate the nightmares I have that I might once more feel the way you made me feel. No one should have the kind of negative impact you do on the ones they love. I hate you for the scars you raked into me that rocked me to my very core, ones that will likely affect my confidence and self worth for some years to come.
I hate you for what happened after. I hate that you couldn’t accept how finished I was with you and for throwing yourself at my feet as a “changed man”, begging pitifully for another chance among the dozens that I gave you. I’ve always caved to you, I had always come back to you in the past because you had such a way of convincing me that no one else would ever love me the way you did, and god I hope no one else ever does. I hope no one obsesses over me in such an unhealthy way, smothers me and simultaneously shoves me away like you did, doling out emotional devastation sprinkled with false happiness and hope for things to get better when they never do. I pray to the universe on a regular basis that what you put me through is the worst I’ll have to feel in this lifetime. I hate you for refusing to let me move on and grow and heal, I hate you even more for dragging me back more than once. I hated the nights I spent alone in my car because I felt unsafe around you almost as much as the nights I cried myself to sleep in my own bed next to you because you wanted nothing to do with me and refused to touch me.
I hate that the way you acted then and now is slowly eroding away the positive memories I have of our relationship. I hate that you took my innocence, broke it, and became angry with me when I told you that it was gone. I hate that you dared to ask for a clean slate many more times than you ever deserved it and that you became physically angry with me when I wouldn’t tell you that everything was ok, despite your knowledge of my stepdad and what I went through. I hate the way that deep in my core I feared you, feared your anger and your displeasure far more than any person should have to.
I hate the hypocrisy of the situation: what you did to me with in high school with her was far worse and more devastating than my defecting from our endlessly sour situation and spending time with someone who showed genuine interest in me. Even though some part of you knows that’s true, I would bet a part of my soul that you’re martyring yourself to some new girlfriend, telling Dena and Janie how I cheated and lied and used you. I hate you simply for the inevitability that you’re now trashing to me to many of the friends I’ve known longer than I knew you. I resent every past and future friendship of mine that has been destroyed because of your need for validation and rationalization.
When we first broke up I pitied you, then I grew to resent the way you guilt tripped me, which blossomed into the disdain I have for your pressuring me and clawing at me to come back and withstand more abuse. There was some sweet justice in seeing you bawl on the carpet of your bedroom, in the fetal position, begging for forgiveness that you never deserved but I was always willing to give. I hope it hurt, asshole. I hope I ripped a hole in your heart when I finally left to rival the one you stamped in mine for years on end. I hate that you made me spiteful and pitiless against my very nature and every inclination I have to love and be loved.
There is some primal part of me that hopes this new girl you found destroys you before you can do to her what you did to me. I hope however shallow and immature she is, she sees the parts of you that are perpetually broken and missing and makes it out unscathed. Perhaps her appearance will be enough to fill the pit your empathy and compassion disappeared into.
And yet
I still wish things hadn’t ended the way they did. I wish that the small part of you that emerges when you’re happy was still in my life, being the good friend I know you can be. I spent so long believing that there was good in you, a positive and happy person buried inside, that I would hate for him to go missing within your hollow shell. I will always miss your friendship, I cannot have shared my life with someone for so long without valuing some part of you. I hope for your sake that at some point in your life you take the time to be alone, without a relationship or any sham of one you might dig up in a barely legal high school girl, to figure your shit out. You will never find someone who wants to fix you; they’ll try and fail and be unfulfilled because the parts of you that are broken can be mended by no one but yourself. You say you had an epiphany and that suddenly you’re okay and I can tell you believed what you said, but it’s bullshit. You sold it to yourself so you could try and sell your newfound self to me and drag me back before I could manage to truly be free of you. You fed me everything I wanted to hear about you finally finding happiness within yourself and wanting me in your life rather than desperately needing me, but once more you never took the time alone you needed to solidify it and I don’t believe you ever will.
You will never fix yourself until you hit rock bottom and I can only hope for your mom and sister than your rock bottom is not as low as your dad’s.
