I have been thinking about her so damn often, so I am writing this letter: “from those of us who left.” More specifically, it is a letter about the pain leaving. Let me explain.
I am one of the many lovers who decided that a relationship was too much. I am one of the people who, for a variety of reasons, couldn't - no, didn't - stand by my significant lover. I walked away from a relationship of more than two years, and there is a cetain unspoken experience that makes me think of her today. I will do my best to speak my truth about this experience, and in doing so, to possibly grant others a glimpse into the heart of those that ran away from love when they could have stayed.
Why aren't those of us who left relationships telling of this experience of leaving? Why do we hear only sad yet beautiful ballads from a heart forgotten, but not ballads from a heart that was foolish enough to try and forget? For me at least, the answer is simple: I don't have the right. When I made the choice to leave my relationship, I made the decision to walk away from my feelings of love. For me, to speak about my wound would be unjust. How can a son explain to his mother that it hurts for him to leave home? He can’t explain his feeling, because it is now his mother’s turn to cry. Thus, the world that we left behind would certainly say back to us "you chose this. Why is it you that hurts? You got to choose your pain. We did not." I never spoke about my pain- the filling, screaming, crying, lonely pain of deliberately pulling your heart away from someone that is so full of love and greatness- because I know that it would have been unfair to have done so. To lay claim to that hurt would be to take from her more than I already had. Those of us who left don't speak about the hurt and for that matter don't again contact our past loves, because it simply isn't our place. But I will join the selfish, and I will break the silence.
That awful feeling of going, how can I explain it? In order to explain the "how and the why it hurts", I have to explain the "why I left". I left, and the band of partners that I speak partially for left, because of uncertainty. I was drifting through my life, and I saw leaving as an exit to my lost and confusing world. I left because the unstable places in my heart took over, and I couldn’t trust the floor of love that I walked on. I walked away because doubt told me that love had much, yes, but that it didn't have it all, and that more was required to go forward. In short, I, and perhaps we, forfeited love because of me,not because of her. I didn't know how to commit to the long, hard and fruitful road of loving. I was scared to close my horizons. Why do so many walk away when they are so very much in love? Because they were faced with this conflict: carrying their love off into a fixed eternity or explore the beautiful branches of chance and choice. For some of us, that is too hard a decision to make. We just couldn't choose.
The above part is what everyone has probably heard before, the "right person, wrong time" paradigm. This is true. But, I am writing this letter to try and explore all the feelings of those who decided to go, so I have to tell you that there is more. It wasn't only about the time or being scared of the decision. We used that because it hurts less. We, I, left because I didn't know why I couldn't choose. I didn't know why it was the "wrong time". I didn't know why things didn't felt right, they just didn't. This is where we (those who leave) are accused of no longer having love in our hearts. It is said that because we cannot just decide to go into infinity, that because we cannot whisk away the beauty of an uncertain future, and because it crosses our minds to think of another way, we don't love. I say that this is not, nor will it be, the case. I still love her. The truth is that something else filled my heart and took hold alongside love: doubt. It was the doubt of my lover not being "right for me", and the doubt of us "being too different", and the doubt of living too far apart, and the doubt of so much more. I, and perhaps we, never knew where the hell this doubt came from, but it came. And because it came, we, I, had to listen. So maybe that is what you mean by me not loving, and part of me agrees. But so much of me doesn't agree, and won’t ever.
Honestly, I don't know if my words can rely on the weight that sits with me even as I write this. Not being able to be the one that stayed hurts more than the Christians hell, I’m sure of it. We, I, fought so hard to push away the fog. I threw myself at the work of patching up the cracks in my unquestioning belief, in my castle of resolve to love her, but still my walls caved. It is not in my nature to stay, and yet I battled on and off for a little under a year and still lost. I want everyone to understand that I fought, we fought, because of the love for our partner. I, we, know how unbelievably perfect and amazing and helpful and selfless and loving our partners are, and knew that they didn’t deserve anything but love in return. I loved her, and I wanted to give her everything because she is so much of grace and more. But I couldn’t, and so I left. I failed her. Truth be told, I am ashamed that I left, and that I couldn’t be what she needed me to be. For you to understand just how much it hurt, and sometimes still hurts, I will tell you this. Some nights I really, truly dreamed that I would die before having to say goodbye. If only I had known truly why I felt like I had to go, then I could have beaten it. I would have. I would have fought that reaper till the day I drew my last breath for her, but there was no enemy to fight but myself. I haven't found what stopped me from staying, not for certain.
This is long enough, and maybe I will write a second letter, but this is a glimpse of how some of the "heartless heartbreakers" feel. The last point I will make is that some of us still love. We still see our past loves every day. We see them in the rainy days that remind me of Germany, and how we sat outside in a hammock. We see them in the cleaning of the room, because they were the clean ones. I see her in the showering, because now I am alone. I see her in the listening to music, because she always played the best songs. I see her in sleeping, because she was so warm. I see her in my friend’s beautiful, childish and wonderful excitement over something seemingly small. I am not saying that I want her back, because I am still scared of it all. So for those of you what were left know that you changed us. Even if we left you, there was never a way that you could leave us. Thank you.
