J.,
Over 1,000 planes fly into SeaTac per day. All summer, I watched them from my balcony, so close I could often tell which carrier. And often, I couldn’t help but imagine you were on one of them, that it was some point in the distant future and you were finally coming to me. That I would be able to show you this city of emeralds that means so much to me.
And then, for a moment, it was true.
One of those planes on Saturday, September 16th, was yours. It was yours and you should have been on it, but you weren’t. Sometimes I still feel that you should be with me now, that we should always be together. But I’m no longer watching, no longer imagining. No longer waiting.
I'm not disappointed, your favorite word to describe what you did to me. I’m not angry or hurt or sad, or any of the things you might expect.
For a while, I was empty.
It’s true that I didn’t think of you as much this time, or dwell on what was, what could have been, as I had all the times before. It’s partly because to think about it, really think about it, felt at the time like being hit by a train.
But it’s also because I had nothing left. I gave so much to you. Even after you told me I had to learn to say goodbye, I gave. Even still, I could have kept giving, if you had only given back.
I wrote, unwrote, and rewrote this letter, my final one to you, what felt like a hundred times, trying to figure out what to say. But nothing I put down seemed to come out right. I didn’t know how I was supposed to feel.
So I fervently searched for all the information and articles I could find about infidelity, just trying to make sense of something. I came to a new understanding. Intentional or not, you used me, and I let it happen. You used me, for comfort, admiration, a fantasy, an escape. I was compared, idealized. You told me as much, many times in many different ways. That you wouldn’t be doing this with me if you didn’t feel taken for granted. That you wanted children with me when I had said I didn’t know if I did. That you wondered how I’d treat you day to day. That you’d been elevating me as the perfect other woman. Over and over again, you told me what I really was to you and I didn’t listen. The only thing that hurt worse than you leaving was realizing that our relationship was only a fantasy. There aren’t words to describe how penetratingly awful that was.
But when I started to grow angry, it would be overcome by waves of guilt. Because I was weak and selfish, and in some ways I used you too. I didn’t comprehend what we were doing or the circumstances surrounding it, not really. I thought I did, but I was so wrong. So much of the time your marriage wasn’t even real to me. And while I didn’t know the specifics, I could sense your vulnerability. Of course I could. Although I know you possess your own agency, I can’t pretend I didn’t exploit that. Even while knowing about your past. While knowing you knew it was wrong. I was vulnerable too, and I wanted you, so I allowed myself to be all those things you wanted, the woman you wanted. To play the role of the comfort, the admirer, the fantasy, the ideal. I wasn’t a good woman, the woman you needed. The one who would stop us, who would say this wasn’t the way it should happen. Instead I encouraged your deceit; not explicitly, but that’s a distinction without a difference.
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After you left me after Austin, our experience was still something I cherished. I viewed your love as a gift, for it forced me to face my suffering and begin the long and arduous process of becoming. It validated me. I felt that I had been understood more completely than ever before, and loved unconditionally at my worst, two of the most precious things one can know. Sometimes I still feel it in some indefinable place within me.
But I can’t see it the same way anymore. All I feel is shame and embarrassment. Shame in knowing I’m now someone you’d rather forget, in knowing that when you look back on your mistakes, I’m one of them. Embarrassment for believing it was love, for believing that it would work out differently for me. But instead I’m just like all the other other women.
So, where does that leave me? It's left me questioning the things I thought I knew. My sense of the world, my sense of self. My values and my morality. My very reality. It left me with a profound loneliness, the kind of loneliness that comes from experiencing great pain and being unable to share it with anyone. I questioned what kind of person I must be, to do what I did; to enable someone’s deceit; and to say those things I said at the end.
I try not to feel regret, because I have undertaken the process of healing. Not just from this, but from the years leading up to it, too. I engaged in our relationship for a reason, and it wasn’t from a place of strength. To find that strength, a strength I’ve never had, will be one of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to do, but it will be one of the greatest things I ever do.
Every once in a while, because I am only human, I look at your online presence, and you seem different. To say you seem happy would be too simplistic. You seem assured. Certain. Satisfied. You've been changed. I know that I don’t know you anymore, and I didn’t really know you then. And you didn’t know me. I even feel in me sometimes a sense of relief. Relief from the constant anxiety, relief from years of suppressed feelings. Relief that it’s over. Really, finally over.
As hard as it’s been to get to this point, I know I need to accept that after ten years, you’re no longer in my life. It’s time. I need to let you go as something that was, but is not now and will not be again. I need to learn how to say goodbye.
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And then there are the times when I feel for you softly, tenderly. Vignettes of shared moments come to me, as if recalling a dream. At times, I can still hear your quiet, gentle voice as a far away murmur in my ear. I see your face and my pulse quickens, just a little. I remember your words and they still move me. There are certain songs I still can’t listen to without feeling as if a great weight were pressing on my chest.
I remember the first time we met face to face. I was so shy, so nervous, that I sat there in silence, for hours, without even comprehending how weird of a thing that was to do. But not once did you make me feel strange for it. You were only kind, and somehow, you still saw me, still wanted me. I can’t help but wonder if I’ll ever find that again, and I think—I worry—that you’ll never really stop meaning something to me.
S.
