Fuck everything.
I could weave up even more poetic words defending and deflecting my feelings. Why though? I don’t think I really care if you judge me for caring almost 3 years later. What does it even really matter?
I owe you indescribable amounts of things, but above ALL, I owe you my deepest, most sincere apology.
Yeah, I could forver sit here and filibuster with bullshit about what you “did”. Who barely remembers? You were a child back then, and so was I. I’m not even close to the same person anymore.
This graveyard website is horrifyingly embarrassing to me. I can’t believe I’m on here.
But…I’ve learned something about you recently, and now I am driven to at LEAST type this out loud. (I’ve thought the following words many times.)
My stupid letter I sent you, 3 whole years, your own, entire life…that’s fine.
What you’ve made do without all this time was an apology from me — Alan. A real fucking one. The one you deserve and always deserved and that I withheld because I was ignorant and shattered. So here it is, with no qualifications or subversions or appeals to any other shit.
I was dead wrong.
Here are the ways I was dead wrong:
I should never have tempted you out of your relationship. I was an imbecile for thinking I might provide a better outcome for you back then. I couldn’t. I knew better. I was selfish and by extension, cruel.
I wasn’t ready to be poly. I talked a huge game and I knew all the theory and the books, but I (obviously) didn’t have a clue what I was doing, which meant I didn’t offer any support when you genuinely needed REAL FUCKING SUPPORT. You were estranged and roughing it!!! The fuck was I doing giving you censored PHONE CALLS every few days at BEST?
The ways I othered you, the fear I instilled in you for telling me the truth, the superiority I wielded, the thoughtlessness in how my actions impacted you, and all this indignant aftermath to what was clearly just you staying safe.
I. Was. An. Ass.
I semi-recently went back and read our conversations for the first time in ages. I couldn’t read them at the time, I was in too much pain. So I basically put our texts in a vault until very recently.
The last month of our texts or so, was….stomach churning. I didn’t recognize myself in those words. I was desperate, lonely, and insecure. I HATED IT. I was PATHETIC. I had to scroll back a looooooooooooot before I started to read conversations from us from before: witty, fluid, REAL. (Good GOD did we talk a lot!!!! Pages and pages a DAY!)
But towards the end, after our first conflict, I truly believed at the time I had total and complete moral high ground. I was SURE of it.
But reading it all over again, instead of to piousness on my part, I was drawn to the words of a beautiful soul, doing the best she could, offering me up SO much love, earnest and pure, dripping with more genuine CARE than I’ve received from ANYONE ever since. (Which is…remarkable. I’ve been blessed.)
I squandered it. The best thing that ever happened to me, I wasted it like an idiot. I let my insecurities about a stupid situation derail the most pure connection I’ve ever had, and probably will ever have in my entire life. (This is NOT a condemnation of anyone presently in my life. This is admitting how much you mean to me.)
You shouldn’t have had to minimize yourself to make us big. You ~ inherently ~ did NOTHING wrong the night you didn’t come over and instead met someone else.
I should have broken apart from my own STUPID AWFUL “RULES” in order to allow US to grow strong.
I should have called you what you were: my girlfriend. My partner. My best friend.
I should have celebrated you no matter what you did, and grown with you not as my property, but as my CHOSEN FAMILY.
I should have given you myself, all of me, my commitment, my body, and my complete and total support of you so that I could watch you grow, grow, grow, grow!
Instead, I was a coward, and an idiot, and the world’s shittiest “friend”. (I dared to call you my best friend…I was horrendous to you.) My partner was horrendous to you. I deserved what I got in the end.
And I lost you forever. Whether you completely lost all interest in me, or only stayed away out of self preservation, or something else, I don’t really know. But I completely lost you. The devastation has been permanent. I only pray you ultimately became happier than with whatever the fuck I “offered” you at that time.
I just…wasn’t ready. I REALLY hurt you as a consequence. And the sorrow I still feel about that defines me to this day.
Zam, I have thought of you every single day since the last moment I saw you, and I am not exaggerating. (For a very long time, in a pining and love-loss way, but for another very long time, in a different, reflective and self-correcting (?) sort of way.) It is the year 2023 and it will become the year 2024, 2025, etc, and I won’t feel any differently; you were my kin and I hurt the person I was supposed to be with in some way shape or form. (This is simply my opinion and it’s 100% okay if you don’t share it today.)
But I at LEAST need you to know this: losing you was the life lesson that corrected my entire life.
I no longer settle for any knee-jerk emotions as my moral compass. I am not content with insecurity as an answer. I celebrate people’s happiness and look to secure my own, completely separately from one another. I strive my absolute hardest to make room for love (as much as I can, I still maneuver through trauma). I deescalated the parts of my previous relationships that were very toxic. I look for the humanity in others. I live alone. I make conscious decisions to connect. And I’ve never stopped looking for that insane spark that you gave me in literally anyone, or anything else, even though I’ve never found it again.
You helped me do all that, even if it wasn’t on purpose. You wouldn’t recognize this Alan, but you helped create him. And I am eternally grateful for that.
I hope, if you ever read this which I doubt but just in case, that you know you are irreplaceable as a human being. And your happiness should be more a priority to you than anyone else’s, even or especially a partner’s. I hope you know that any weaknesses you have do not define you, and you could have the world in any way you saw fit, if you wanted it. I hope your mind is at peace, and not groping for answers or calm, like mine. I hope someone on this planet has gotten to know you and sees you the way I once got to, even or especially if it’s only you.
You were the most incredible person I’ve ever met, and I’m sure present-day 3D you is just as wonderful of a person to be around. Losing you will forever and ever be my life’s biggest loss, but meeting you has helped me become better in every way versus what was possible before I had met you.
I am sorry for everything. I am okay, but I’ve spent 3 years paying dearly for what I did, a lot of it necessary time, and I’m prepared to have it that way forever. The only thing I wasn’t okay settling for was not having SOME place where I could say out loud what I’ve been feeling all this time. At least now, I have.
I love you, and I always will.
-Alitan
