Almost half a year ago, I made the most difficult decision in my life and ended our 9 year and 8 month relationship in order to save so many things that were on the line. I lost my best friend and the person I loved most. I faced my biggest fear of losing you because I wanted to save you from your own passivity, insecurity, complacency, reliance, indifference, and lack of drive. I knew that, as your most trusted partner, if I couldn’t have helped you despite how hard I tried all of these years, that wasn’t something I could personally do for you no matter how much I wanted to. I valued communication the most, and that was something that couldn’t be reciprocated on your end. I wasn’t getting back all that I was putting into us.

I knew that if you truly loved me, that you would find your way back to me.

Now…somehow, I feel like you’ve either lost your way back to me, or you’ve purposefully chosen to take a different path, one that will never cross with mine ever again.

How can you stop loving someone so soon after all the time and memories we had together and all we went through together? Love is not something you put on hold. A relationship can be put on hold, but the feeling of love itself? I thought I stopped loving you at one point in the half year we broke up, but that was my own defense mechanism to stay functional.

If you have any true affection left towards me, I think it’s time to be honest and realize that you are leading me on. I was skeptical about starting to talk and spend more time together, but you made the initiative for us to do it. When I was ready to let myself heal and forget about the pain all of this has caused me, you held on tight and didn’t want us to become strangers. Why? The long drives together in the car, the late night walk at the beach, the kiss you gave me on the front step of my house, those stupid shirtless photos you sent me, the romantic dates we went on that people normally don’t do with regular friends. And yet, when I finally reciprocated the kiss you gave me, you described it with “a little uncomfortable,” that it couldn’t be reciprocated, and that you like where we are now. I get that you like “where we are now,” but where exactly are we now? Friends don’t do all that. Can I venture out to say that maybe you’re the one who is confused or in denial? Or maybe in denial that although you like where we are now, you like your own life now and you enjoy the little moments we have together, but you don’t want me mixed back into it?

I don’t think that’s fair for me to be pushed aside and to be pushed into the fray of feelings all over again. I have to say that I feel like I’m back at square one and I feel as hurt as I did many months ago.

Sometimes goodbye is easier than hello.