I like to consider myself romantic. I loved the idea of telling our kids about how mommy and daddy were high school sweet-hearts. But, the things is, I loved that idea a little too much. I wanted that sweet love story so much that I was willing to look past anything and everything and the truth of the matter is that that's just not healthy.
No one should have to go months feeling unloved by the person that they give all of their love to. No one should come to expect and to be okay with not feeling special and beautiful and worth something. I never should have let myself become okay with the fact that you never called because honestly, I hated it, and that was never a secret. I fully believe that all relationships are centered around communication and trust, the former of which we lacked from the get-go and the latter I lacked nearing the end.
Call it intuition or self-confidence or what-have-you, but I always knew that if one of us couldn't handle long distance, it'd be you. But I pushed that aside because when you told me that you'd always love me, I believed you; I trusted you. Now, I'm not saying that I shouldn't have believed you or trusted you, but I am saying that I'm glad that I started to become weary when I did. It let me move on a lost faster than I ever thought possible. But I have one thing left to address:
I used to think, "I can never imagine my life without you." I even went and made sure that we'd still be friends, but now I realize that that's just not possible. It's not because either of us don't want to be friends. It's simply because it's not conducive to who we want to be in the future.
If we were to continue being friends, we would both be in the way of any and all of each other's future relationships. It wouldn't matter if we were trying to be a road block or not. We still would be. No prospective significant other is going to be comfortable or be interested knowing that the person they're developing feelings for still talks to their long-term ex.
If we were to continue being friends, we would risk undoing all of the moving on we've already done. It's easy to be friends with someone, much more so than it is to maintain a romantic relationship. When you see that a friendship is going well, you're more likely to question why the romantic relationship ever ended in the first place. It's not healthy to fall into and out of a stressful relationship like that.
If we were to continue being friends, we would actually have to know one another. And we can't do that because we are not the same people who fell in love with each other in high school. In fact, we are very, very different people. And the truth of it all is that I don't know you anymore. I can't be friends with someone who I don't know, and at this point in our lives, we don't have the time, energy, or proximity to get to know one another again. We both have a lot going on in our lives, a lot of things that don't match up with each other's paths.
Maybe our paths will cross again one day; maybe our paths have separated for good. For now, this is all I know.
