You Broke my Heart in June

You broke my heart in June. I broke yours for twelve years.

Going back to the beginning, I don’t think we ever expected more than a few months of fun, but it became apparent in the early weeks that there was more. I was broken, you wanted to fix me. On the flipside, you were a mess and I needed a challenge to get my mind off of everything that broke me. We fell fast and hard, ignoring the rules of rebounding and the fact we were too young for something so real. Those days weren’t easy, and the years that followed were littered with speed bumps, but maybe not more than any other relationship.

I threw words like swords, thinking that you were stronger than you were. You never left. You saw me through every substantial event in my life. Twelve years of it. We took on growing up together, leaning on each other and pushing when we needed it. You met every definition of soul mate, and I’ll give it up that I pushed you away as hard as I could, chasing the hope that you would come back to me and prove you loved me. I was a nightmare. I am a nightmare. But you loved me, until you didn’t.

I took advantage of love. I watched you pull back and I thought, that’s okay, I don’t need him. I got on that plane in June and for the sake of honesty, the idea of never coming home crossed my mind. I thought about it. What would happen, how it would go down, everything that encompasses ending a ten year marriage. I would never pull the trigger, realistically; the thought I could walk away and survive was enough to keep me going. It wasn’t a bad marriage by any means, I just liked my independence and the storyteller in me craved heartbreak and tragedy over happy endings and fairy tales.

Then my life fell apart. It’s funny when someone dies, the grief can make you reevaluate everything in your life and realize what you’re doing wrong in ways you would never have thought of before. It just happened too late, I guess. You called me and told me wholeheartedly if I didn’t change what I was doing, you were going to be gone. It was too late, because you were already falling for her, but you said it and I took it to heart and I changed. I did a 180 on my entire life and I came home and it got better, right? It got great. We connected in ways that we hadn’t before and even when I found out about her, you promised it was over and I chalked it up to the worst summer of my life, but we could come back bigger and better. Soulmates, after all, has to count for something. And I had done my fair share of hurting you, so we could wipe the slate clean with this.

Until November. Because the pain ate at me like a parasite, the jealousy enveloping me and spitting out a shell of a person. I snapped at everyone. I pushed away friends. I cursed Apple for fingerprint locks on iPhones and browsed your email in the middle of the night. You ran from the person I became, finding solace in new love. I should have ended it when I came back and found out, saving us both from hope of brighter days. I tried, a few times, to end it but I cried and crawled back to you, and you promised change and I promised change and we soaked in the opportunity to fall in love again. I wish I had made changes sooner. I wish you had stuck it out, just a week longer. I wish I hadn’t given you the opportunity to fall in love with someone else, right under my nose, while I was too busy trying to be someone I wasn’t.

Fate came down to a few day difference between you giving up and me realizing what I was losing by living life how I was living it. I’m not bitter. I wish it would have worked out but I think once it’s over, really over, there is a sense of peace. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end and unfortunately, it’s going to be okay soon. I will love you, you will be my best friend and my soulmate until the day I die, but it’s better this way. We ended it on a good note, I really believed we had been doing so well, until we weren’t. I guess slates can never be truly wiped clean. All the great novels, they end when you want them to the least, giving you an idea of hope but you never really know.

You texted me this morning, “you okay?” and I wanted to say all the things in my mind but we are, undoubtably and painfully, the same person. I know what you’re doing, and I can’t confide in you. I am broken now. I will sit here wallowing in the dying embers of everything I loved, wishing for every way to take it back and make it right again, knowing though, that the end is near and this is not forever, this is just the darkest moments of my life. The darkest moment of my life is your brightest, but one day I know we will be able to be best friends again, and laugh at all the things we used to laugh at. I just don’t know right now how to be something you miss.

We’re equally guilty, but I have to thank you. Thank you for the lessons in love, growing up, becoming the person you want to be and for every moment that I will reflect on what we shared. Thank you for getting me out of that hometown, and showing me parts of the world I always wanted to see. Thank you for loving me at my lowest and supporting me through college and my many different breakdowns. Thank you for our beautiful daughter and twelve years of the greatest love story I’ll never write. Thank you for being it when I needed it, there will never be another you.

-Anonymous