Unsaid

Hello, 

It’s been eight years since you left me. The same amount of years we’ve been together. Has it really been that long?  

I still have your letter, but today, I think it’s only fair that I write this letter back to you. To bring up the things left unsaid between us. To ask all the questions I never got to ask. I should have said all of this to you when I had a chance, but I didn’t. 

So, here it goes:

What the hell happened to us? Where did we go wrong in our relationship? How the hell did we go from happiness to misery? When did you become so negative and angry? 

Maybe we shouldn’t have gotten together in the first place. 

This whole thing was a  mistake. 

Was it all bad? 

It started out with a happy beginning. During those long bus rides, we were so immersed in our conversations that we nearly missed our stops. Whenever you walked along the hallway, this unnatural giddiness bubbled inside me. Our grand discovery of text messaging ended up racking up two hundred dollars worth of phone bills. Our first winter formal dance was just as emotional as our prom night. 

We were happy.

Our friends looked up to us as true love. They begged us not to break up. They claimed if we were to break up, the whole world would end.

We had big plans. We were going to head to the same university to pursue our passion. After that, we would get a big house with a perfect library and family. 

But nothing went as planned. I was the first to get accepted to the university. You still had a lot to accomplish, but you insisted that I start my journey. You would catch up later.  

Yes, it was hard being apart from you during my first year at the university. It was nice when we figured out the times we could visit each other. But whenever I was in class or studying for exams, you got upset when I didn’t reply to your text messages. I explained to you how hectic my classes were, but you merely shrugged.

By the end of my first year at the university, I thought it was the end of us, too.

But we worked it out like we always did. 

When we finally moved in together, it was a dream come true. It felt like we were the newly weds who got to endure this joyous occasion.

It was going well. 

But over the years, your personality disintegrated. I no longer saw a bright, happy boy who could challenge people into long, intelligent conversations. Everything you touched or said ignited this horrible gray cloud. It  hovered over you and grew so thick and heavy it was unbearable to be around you.

I expected you to join me on my university adventures, but nothing happened. You said it was going to happen but never produced proof. Every time I brought it up, you always looked annoyed.

After a while, I got tired of asking.

If only I were to call out your lies instead of waiting for you to admit them. If we were supposed to share everything together, I assumed you would eventually clean up your pile of crap, but you only made it bigger. 

If only I didn’t stop painting. You spat out so many venomous words I could barely see bright colors. If I were to paint more, it could have added colors to my world every time you exploded.

If only I didn’t listen to your weird critiques of my stories. You thought I should write like some dead, snobby, sci-fi writer I had no interest for. (And no, I still have not read that book.) I didn’t want to write an outdated structure. I wanted to do something weird, something unusual, something no one ever thought of. Any time you shot down my ideas, I wrote stories that intentionally pissed you off more. It was a shitty move, but how else could I express my own frustrations? 

I wish I would have stood up to you when you mocked my interests, the big and little things that brought me so much joy. I had to either be away from the apartment or be alone in it if I wanted to enjoy my interests. What was wrong with liking shiny stickers? Why did you suddenly turn your nose up on your favorite artists? Why did you always kick me to the curb whenever I was in a cheerful mood?  

I should have spent the night at a friend’s house when your temper flared. Hell, a night at a crappy motel with a bug-ridden bed was a better option than suffocating in your rage. At least I could have gotten restful sleep there instead of suffering from insomnia and a pollution of horrible thoughts. 

If only I had packed my bags, getting my own place to focus on my own dreams. But the lack of finances scared the shit out of me. I stayed so we could share the rent.

If only I didn’t care so much about what our friends would think if we broke apart. I wish I didn’t feel like we had an obligation to uphold their dream of finding true love. I was afraid that none of our friends would truly believe me about this toxicity. Why did I let my fear of being cut off from friends hold me back?  

Day by day, month by month, I tried too hard to make everything work out between us. I was the one putting forth all my energy, and you shut down. I couldn’t figure you out anymore. 

We were just two strangers. 

Two strangers out on awkward dates. 

Two strangers who always went to bed angry. 

Two strangers who had to paint fake smiles on in public.

Two strangers who barely had room to breathe in a tiny space.

Eight years ago, after my university graduation, I craved more challenges. I wanted something more than our apartment. I discovered a writing conference taking place in Illinois, so naturally, I got excited. I expected you to say something, or at least fake your enthusiasm, but you expressed nothing.

I didn’t bother to buy two round-trip plane tickets, let alone reserve a hotel room. If you wanted to come along, you should have said so. It was my chance to escape from your toxicity for a few days. I had high hopes that we could patch up our relationship after the conference. I assumed all we needed was some space, a moment to reflect. I thought if you saw how serious I was about this conference, it could inspire you to pursue your passions again.

Everything was going as planned. 

Until one day, you left.

You left without an explanation.

Without an apology.

Not even a goodbye.

All I had was an abundance of questions left unanswered.

I was speechless and broken. Confusion, anger, and sadness rolled into a fat lump of depression that weighed me down. It didn’t help that your gray cloud stayed behind and swallowed me up. As it grew bigger, it was harder to fight. 

I wish I’d been brave enough to ask someone for advice on how to purge the toxicity. I’d been a horrible, empty shell buried underneath our crap for so long. I didn’t know what to do, so I fucked everything up. I flung mistakes left and right like ruined paint. I fucked up so many bridges and let them burn to the ground. All I cared about was searching for the goddamn answers behind your departure.

If I were to break up with you earlier in the past, would it make any difference? If I actually took that chance, would you end up doing something more with your life? Or would you have still left no matter the outcome?

In your letter, you said you were sorry you never had the chance to exceed my expectations. But it wasn’t my expectations you should have been worried about; it should have been yours. You had so many opportunities to succeed, but I didn’t want to pull all that weight for you. If only I didn’t have to keep waiting for something to happen from you. I had no idea what I was waiting for, but it certainly wasn’t this.

Maybe we were both too immature to understand our shit. We didn’t allow each other to grow. We didn’t accept the fact that our views changed, and we didn’t mesh well with each other’s new lives. We both felt stuck. We had no fucking clue what to do with constant change.

Was that the reason you left? 

Were you scared of change? 

I may not have taken those chances when everything turned to shit, but I gained the chance to rebuild myself.  

Instead of allowing that gray cloud to stick around, I take out my paintbrushes and color the shit out of it. As the colors soak in deep, there is no longer this awful, sickening feeling pressing down on me. Now that colors transpire in my world again, my moods are so light I’m floating in the air. Even if you were here right now and tried to drag me down, I’d be out of reach. 

It’s such a relief not to write stories to please you or anyone else. I’m doing this for my sixteen-year-old self who wanted more representation in books. I won’t disappoint her. 

I’m no longer scared shitless of the best and worst scenarios. Instead, I run right into them. The path gets scary as I travel further. I’ve been hurt lots of times, but when I reach the end, I will heal.  

I will finally say goodbye. I should have told you a long time ago. It’s okay we didn’t beat the odds of high school love lasting forever. It’s okay we fell right into its trap. Just because we run out of matches to keep the spark going, it doesn’t mean our good memories should burn away. We’ll push forward to wherever we’re going. 

And that’s all we can do. 

Farewell.

-Tashi Saheb-Ettaba

Tashi would rather be in a company of cats, ghosts, and monsters than people. She earned her Master’s in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Hamline University. She translated Hideko Nishikawa’s picture book, Aki and Haruka, Where Are You Going? She is also a Reader for FORESHADOW: A Serial YA Anthology. Whenever she is not feverishly revising her manuscript, she likes to travel, watch horror movies, dye her hair in obnoxious colors, and decorate the world with stickers.