Dear You

Dear You,

I think it's time we clear the air. I think it's time we spoke some truth in the ending of the never meant to be forever "thing" that we were. And? Here it is. 

The truth is, neither of us was growing. I think, deep down, we both knew that. We were stagnant, stuck in a rut, not making moves. We spent months just making empty promises under spilling rays of starlight that slowly faded into days of blissful nothingness in the sunshine. 

And while neither of us was entirely bad for the other, neither were we thoroughly good. At the end of the day, we were a stop along the other's journey to the next steps in our lives, a chapter that wasn't meant to make it to the end of the book. 

Thing is...that's okay. In fact, it's more than okay; it's the way of things. It was a season, and it was a season I will remember fondly.

I remember I once said that people will walk alongside you on your journey until they aren't meant to walk beside you anymore. I told you that at some point, everyone goes their own way. Whether it be growing together, growing apart, separation, divorce, of the worst of them...death. 

And while you might think it is, that truth was never my problem, nor was it anything that made me upset. I have lived for nearly four and a half decades. I have become wise in the way of things, and I accept them for what they are. You, however, did so love to romanticize everything, with notions of forever people and always relationships. 

While I could live with all of that, while I even made peace with your making me the villain in your story, and while I had already forgiven you for things you hadn't even done yet, that understanding was never reciprocated. And before you say that isn't true, please step back and remember how you exited...

Instead of talking to me, you threw me away like yesterday's trash. You discarded me as if I was not even worth a goodbye, a proper argument or even a reason. Things went from being fine to not fine in an instant, but instead of a dialogue, any type of attempt to salvage a relationship you claimed to value, I was, instead met with a wordless wall of silence that spoke volumes worthy of the largest libraries known to mankind. The power of every syllable unsaid, every word unwritten, every song unsung. I went from being something to you to nothing to you literally overnight. 

As if that wasn't painful enough, you chose not to acknowledge your exit in any way. Your Instagram and Facebook remain unfazed. Your Snapchat showcasing stories of your "happy" life. There was no indication of pain or remorse or sadness like that was on mine. 

What you don't know, is that while I could forgive nearly anything else, that I couldn't. That is what I couldn't forgive. That is what I cannot abide by. It wasn't the story up until that point, it was that, at the end of everything I wasn't even worth a goodbye to you, not even in the slightest sense of the word. 

You knew I wouldn't chase you. You knew that my rule was not to operate as if there was not a problem unless someone said otherwise. You chose not to do that, so, as a result, I chose to say nothing at all back to your wall of stone-cold silence. I chose to retreat, to fade into my own existence and to close that chapter without reason or explanation. 

In the first few days it hurt. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't deeply wounded. I'd be lying if I said I didn't express my own pain the ways I see fit to express my pain, making videos and working through my emotions -- which doesn't make me wrong, by the way, it makes it my process; you knew that was my process. It was never a problem for you until you wondered if it was about you. And you'd be lying if you said that wasn't true. 

But here's the thing, after the first few days, the first few weeks, the hurt gave way. The wound healed. And I went chasing my peace again. I found it too...in case you were wondering. And it was a better peace than I had known in a long time. 

Yet, it was also in this peace that I found a revelation, and for that I thank you. I realized that sometimes you have to choose between your peace and your purpose. Both come with a price. I would never have rediscovered my purpose without your exit, without your disruption of the peace I had allowed myself to be lulled into listening to lullaby of mediocrity that you sang so often and loudly; a somewhat false peace, but a peace nonetheless, but a peace not designed to last the test of time. 

For the time we spent together I remain grateful. As I watch you slip into nothing more than a memory of someone I knew once, years ago, I do so with a fondness of your memory, but also no desire to ever reconnect with you or with that memory in the present. But make no mistake, this is not because of you, or of who you were to me or how much I did value our connection. I choose to let you fade permanently away because of the way you chose to leave things. People don't treat people they claim to love like yesterday's garbage. People who claim to love someone that had been good and kind and loving to them, at least give them the courtesy of a goodbye, even when things don't work out the way we had planned. 

So that's it. That's the truth. That's the end. 

But if you've come this far, you are one of two people. You are the type of person who connects with these words because you can relate to them, or you're the person who reads this and wonders if it's about you.

The truth is, it's not.

It's about me.

It always has been.

It's about my journey to connect meaningful words with souls where missing pieces fit. So no, as much as you'd like this bit of writing on the page to be about you, it isn't, and it never will be.

Fact is, your actions aren't remarkable enough to make "this" or anything else I do just about one person. Your actions are no different than those of a hundred someones over the years. You weren't the first, nor were you the only one in the span of thousands of souls who have crossed my path in my time on this planet who this could apply to in so many ways.  

And this is the biggest truth, if you have made it this far, no matter which type of person you are. Writing, and creating, making videos or posts, putting up memes of things I share or find relevant have nothing to do with you...and they never did. None of it was ever about you, it was always about me, my journey and how I was going to find my way back to my words, and how those words were meant to impact someones that weren't you. 

Just like these have. 

Love, 

Me