What My Pride Can’t Say

Aidon,

I’ve spent so much time just thinking and reflecting, but somehow never forgetting. I can’t seem to forget anything about this whole experience. I’m not sure I want to if I’m being totally honest. When someone shakes your world and changes both your heart and your mind, how can you just forget about them?

I can’t.

I channel it into art, poetry, and all forms of my writing. I think mainly I’m just trying to write my way into understanding because I will never understand how you so easily forgot, moved on, and never once thought to look back.

I always thought we meant more than that.

People think the distance between us should make things easier, but it doesn’t. I think maybe it’s because the distance is so vast it makes everything about us feel small and meaningless and I hate that. Because to me, all of this was real. Nothing about the way I felt was fake, and it was unlike anything I had experienced before. I guess that’s what makes the aftermath so difficult as well.

I hope you don’t misinterpret why I’m writing you. This is not some confession that I’m madly in love with you and I want us back. This is just me breaking the silence that we so casually built between us. It’s me bringing some misunderstanding into the light. It’s me just simply trying to keep growing.

A part of myself wants to know if any of this was hard for you, and another part of myself knows I can’t really handle any more of your “truths.” It took me awhile to stop looking at your social media, but when I saw your vacations and the joy on your face with him, I knew I was just hurting myself deeper than you initially did. That pain was all on me.

When I was with you in Australia my emotions were so blindsided I couldn’t decide on how to feel. Love triumphed, which gave me patience, but I have still yet to find forgiveness. I can’t seem to forgive you for what you did to me. I go from anger, to hurt, to sadness, to just feeling like a dumb American.

You left me alone, after I flew across the world to be with you because you said you loved me, and then you ran after someone else. You wanted both of us, and in the end chose what was easier and more convenient. I can’t blame you for that. It’s easier to keep your life the way it is than to do something drastic that could alter it all together. But no one really grows in their comfort zone, and everything about you threw me out of mine. Heck I was supposed to be living with you in Australia right now! Nothing could have thrown me out of my zone more than that. Maybe that’s why I have taken so much away from this experience. I’m not going to pretend to know where you are in your life. I can only focus on myself and where I’m going, but I will never forget where I’ve been.

Why didn’t you try harder to keep me in your life? Why did you just let me walk away?

I know it’s easy to move on when you have your focus on someone else. I did not have that luxury, nor do I want it. I had my focus on you, and how you were able to balance two hearts for so long I will never understand. I bet it was easier to move on because you never had to see my pain, and maybe that is how distance could be beneficial for you. But I refuse to throw myself in a relationship just to forget my previous one.

I am thankful I allowed myself to break for you because I now have so much more clarity on what I want, what I need, and who I am. Now I can learn to love myself in all the ways you and I couldn’t. You never really know how little you know yourself until you actually take the time alone to learn it. But the more I learn, the more I realize how hard it is to grow. I guess maybe that’s why they have the term growing pains because even flowers must push their way through dirt before they can truly bloom and be beautiful. So many people settle in their lives, and I refuse to be one of them. So bring on the dirt, bring on the pain, because  I’ll be basking in the sun looking amazing. Alright, that’s enough of the poetic references for me.

Aid if we’re meant to be in one another’s life like we always believed, then time should never change that. So no matter how long it is until we speak again or see one another, I hope one day we can connect in a way that was better than before. Let that be the one truth you gave me.

Love,

KTN