#pretendingtoadult

Oh, Alexandra.  This breaks my heart for you, I feel like I’ve seen your relationship through Instagram and here and I’m so sorry to hear that it ended, and like this.  I wanted to answer you right away but I’m still trying to figure out what to say.  

Betrayals, I think, are really hard because they don’t just make you angry at the other person, they make you question your own judgment.  They make you feel foolish.  Like the ground has fallen out from beneath you and you should have seen it coming.  Please don’t let yourself feel foolish.  Insensitive people, and The World In General likes to make it seem like vulnerability and the ability/tendency to trust are weaknesses.  They aren’t.  You trusted someone who said he loved you and acted like he loved you, to love you.  That’s not only good, it’s completely reasonable.  He’s behaved badly and I think it’s important to know that, and be angry for a while, and then, hopefully, as soon as possible but no sooner, forgive him.  Not because he deserves it, but because you do.  You deserve to live a life where at first this hurts you, it hurts and hurts and hurts, just piercingly so sometimes you feel like you can’t breathe, because that’s how vulnerable and trusting people are going to feel sometimes.  It sucks ballsssssss I knowwwww.  But the trade off is after that–again, just exactly when it’s possible, not half the time of the relationship or on your anniversary or when you start seeing people again, just whenever you can–you get to let it go.  Because fuck him, honestly, in the most goddamn forgiving zen Oprah way possible fuckkk himm and his cowardly brutal bullshit.  You deserve to move on in your nebulous own time because you deserve the later, better, much much much longer part of your life where you look back on it and go, sort of distantly, “Can you even believe???” and someone who loves you, really truly tenderly embarrassingly loves you, runs a thumb across your cheekbone and goes, “No I cannot,” because they CAN’T they love you so much and think you’re so impossibly beautiful inside and out, they think about you so much that it distracts them at work sometimes, they literally cannot believe someone couldn’t see how precious you are.

Please don’t let this make you falter or undermine yourself.  It’s not your responsibility to stay lovable–because being loved is your right–it’s his responsibility to stay capable of loving.  This doesn’t speak to your lovability at all, because lovability is infinite.  This doesn’t say anything about you.  Only about him, and only bad and ultimately sort of sad things about him.  Be Taylor Swift-ian in your adamance about your experiences.  This all happened, it happened exactly the way you remember it, it was real, it’s still real, that doesn’t change and he can’t take it away.  Please give him as little power as possible here.  When you can, try to remember that it’s better you saw this side of him before you loved him forever.  It’s like that part in That Thing You Do where Liv Tyler cries in the dressing room, in this beautiful white satin and red velvet dress and says “I have wasted thousands and thousands of kisses on you,” and walks out, dignified in her raw emotion.  If even remotely possible, try to be grateful you won’t be wasting any more kisses on him.

I saw the part about no texts while your phone was off and holy crap do I FEEL THAT.  But you aren’t alone.  You have your family, and you have your friends, and you have the internet.  Most importantly, you also have you, and I gotta tell you that being your own best friend is this weird, lonely, kind of awesome thing.  Like I don’t quite know how to describe it except that I feel fond of myself in the same way I feel fond of my best friends, like I like what I have to say and I think I’m funny and I love my outfits and I want to talk to myself about my day and see what I have to say about it.  And I think that’s something that when you’re first alone (not alone) feels like a thing you HAVE to do–become best friends with yourself.  But the further you get in, the more it feels like a thing you GET to do.