To who I thought was the one,

You walked away, and that should be enough to answer all the questions that I have. Unfortunately, everything still lingers. The night you left; you were so cold. The look in your eyes confirmed all my worst fears- you were done. When you walked out the door, you left the man I thought I knew there. You broke a lot of promises that day, including the one you put on my finger. You ultimately chose being free over having a life with me. That has not been an easy pill to swallow, but I only want you to be happy. Here's the thing though, I am not going to be that typical ex and pretend as if everything was fine and I don't miss you at all, because let's be honest, no one actually feels that way. I do miss you. I do think about you. How could I not? You were a huge part of my life for a couple of years, and I saw my future with you. The night before we parted, I told you I wanted to grow old with you and watch you turn grey; I meant it. You were my favorite person, and you were my best friend. It would be silly for us to pretend that we don't think about each other or miss each other. With that being said, how could you not have at least reached out to check on me after the breakup? How could you so instantaneously cut me out of your life like that, as if I meant nothing to you? My hope after this letter is that maybe we can get to a place where we stop pretending as if we don't care about each other, because I will always care for you. I will always want to see you thrive and succeed in life. So, I hope after all is said and done, we can move past this and still support and cheer each other on, just from a distance.

There are some things I want you to know, however: I want you to know, I never wanted to change you. How could I? I fell in love with you for a reason. I only ever wanted to support and help you, but like they say, you can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped. Thus, leading us into war, which I never meant to start. I saw the internal struggle within you, but I also saw the beautiful heart within you as well. I had so much passion for you, that I only ever wanted to push you and challenge you to be your best-self, because I believed in you. But maybe that is what led us to our destruction. I also want you to know, my heart wasn't the only heart you broke; you know how much you meant to this family, because you were a part of it. When you walked away, I wasn't the only person you left behind; you left behind an entire group of people who loved you, cared about you and took care of you. You told me on our final day together that you felt trapped in our relationship- that was never my intention. I was simply scared. I had given you my whole heart, but the lack of trust got the best of me, and you know why. One of the many things I have come to realize during the course of my healing process, and I hope one day you might realize this as well, you said you felt trapped, but I don't think you noticed that I was the one with the chains. I was constantly in pain from your mistakes, but yet I was always the one to comfort you. I was always there for you, to try and help you open up and talk to me, to reassure you that you were with someone who made you feel safe and secure. Yet, you were always so quick to blame me for your life problems, you constantly put everything on my shoulders, and you continued to build resentment against me, even though I was the one who continuously got my heart broken and trust shattered. I could never understand why, when all I ever wanted was the truth and for you to let me in.

There are also many things I want to thank you for. I want to thank you for your patience. During our years together, I had experienced some difficult times in my life and wasn't always the most pleasant person to be around, but you were always very patient with me and I can't tell you how much that meant to me. I want to thank you for always being there to help me. You helped me with so much during the course of our relationship: Homework, all the times my car decided to give me problems, random grocery store runs when I needed something to cook with, always pumping my gas for me, fulfilling my obnoxious sushi cravings- I could go on and on about all the wonderful things you helped me with but the biggest one would be your help and encouragement with my health journey. You stood by me when I became unhealthy and pushed me to be better. When I finally decided to, there you were ready to help me. You taught me so much, that I know I wouldn't be as far as I am now without your guidance, so thank you. And an even bigger thank you, is I want to thank you for giving me a love that I truly needed. Even though towards the end, there was a lot of tears and a lot of pain, between hello and goodbye, there was an unbelievable love. A love I truly didn't know I could feel or receive. You did, you loved me so much- I could see it your eyes, and I loved you. At the time, you were my future and my best friend. One of the many lessons I have come to learn during this time is, a part of healing is also understanding how I was toxic. I wasn't perfect, and part of the growing process for me has been understanding where I went wrong.

The thing is, you see, I'm not the same person you once knew. I'm sure you were probably waiting for me to breakdown and contact you. You probably thought I was miserable waiting for you to come back, and I'm not going to lie, it was really hard in the beginning. I wanted to crawl out of my skin, I constantly thought I was sinking into the ground, my chest felt completely hallow. But the things you broke inside of me, I built back up. I have become and grown into someone you will unfortunately never have the honor of getting to know. The saddest part about all of that is, we couldn't grow together. That is all I wanted, was to just grow with you, to grow together instead of apart. Inevitably, you started to go into a different direction, and we were in a constant game of tug-of-war, and the second you let go of the rope, I broke. But as time has passed and I've changed, I now see that in order to become the person I was always meant to be, you needed to let go of the rope; you needed to let go of me so that I could go and discover myself. You ended up giving me a gift I don't think you were aware you were giving me: the gift of finding myself. You helped me discover the person I was always meant to be. And that is my biggest thank you of all.

Lastly, want you to know, even after all the pain you caused me, I do not regret being with you, I do not regret giving my time to you and I most certainly do not regret loving you. It took me a long time to come to this very difficult conclusion, but you were right; the relationship needed to end. Neither one of us were happy, but for different reasons. I was holding on to something that wasn't there anymore, and I believe you knew that. We ultimately wanted different things at this stage in our lives- you wanted to have a good time over having a good thing. But if there is one thing I want you to take away from this letter, it's that, even though you showed me great heartache and pain, you also showed me great love and friendship. I know that good guy we would talk about is in there somewhere, but I can't wait for him. I will always hope and pray that the guy I know will resurface, but for now I will continue moving on and continue to go down the path God has set me on and better myself. Although I may not love you who you've become, I will always love the guy that would make me dance with him when I was feeling down, that would make me laugh uncontrollably and not even mean to, who would kiss my forehead when he was leaving to go home and the guy who looked at me with such devotion and whispered "I love you" for the first time. And as the leaves begin to change colors, I will remember the rumble of your truck pulling up on that November evening and how my life and my heart was forever changed in that moment.

Sincerely,

Your first love