I Hope My Ex Does(n't) Read This

One dreary winter day, nearly two years into dating, he ended things rather oddly: “I don’t think you’ll be okay if we break up,” he explained, “which is why we have to break up.” Though confounding, I suppose it was not surprising—he often resented how much I seemed to need him.

“Am I supposed to be okay?” I wanted to scream. Isn’t mutual dependence, the desire to intertwine two lives, the very essence of a relationship? Why shouldn’t it hurt when the one you love walks away?

I flipped the question back on him: “Are you not scared to be without me?”

His response came with a disquieting certainty: “Oh, no. I’m so ready to be alone.”

 It felt cruel, coming from someone who supposedly loved me. Though in his own way, I know he did. Usually distant with others, he was tender with me. “I like you so much,” he’d murmur, his face buried in my shoulder. I thought by being his exception, I was being exceptionally loved.

Our relationship began the same day that lockdown started, the day I happened to get COVID myself. What was meant to be a two-week quarantine soon became a five-month stay. While the rest of the world suffered from loss and loneliness, we reveled in intimacy and constant togetherness. Every meal, memory, and minute was just between us.

As the world reopened, so did his desire to pursue hobbies outside of the relationship, mostly outdoors. Rock climbing, I would soon discover, was his real love—the true object of his unwavering affection. We moved into separate apartments, our relationship seemingly playing out in reverse.

“You’re best when you’re writing,” he’d nudge, as if I needed reminding of my own interests. Meant to be encouraging, it often felt backhanded—like pressure more than support. Without the pandemic as an excuse, any preference for spending time with him over pursuing my own passions made him feel like I was underperforming as his partner.

“I want us to be individuals, living each of our lives fully, coming together to share what we’ve done. One plus one equals two,” was his logic. “And I don’t believe in better halves.”

“So you’re implying I am less than whole,” I cried to him. But that’s exactly how I felt following the split—really, that’s how I felt after all my breakups in my eight consecutive years of serial monogamy. In that sense, he was right; when he left, I was not okay.

For months, I sat in mourning, paralyzed by indecision. Simple choices, like what to eat for dinner and how to spend an afternoon, felt torturous. For two years, it was always, how do we spend our time? What do we want to do? Or rather, what do you want? I happily deferred because merging my own needs into his seemed key to a long-lasting relationship, right?

All by myself, at any moment of uncertainty, I felt him twisting the knife deeper: “See? You’re not independent enough. How could I have stayed?”

Haunted by his words, both real and imagined, I couldn’t stand it anymore. My sulking had to stop. To prove I was strong enough on my own, I chose the most irrefutable way I could think to do so: I’d embark on a journey entirely by myself.

“A whole month of solo travel?” my friend gaped. “I could never do that! Where are you going?”

It was a trip I had really wanted to take with him, in fact. A classmate had invited us to her destination wedding in Phuket, and though I never shared my fantasy itinerary with him, I knew our ideal journey would begin there in Thailand, snake through Vietnam, Taiwan, South Korea, and end in Japan. I dreamed of the stories we’d tell on our return: getting lost in night markets, savoring ramen in quaint eateries, and if my heart had its way, a culminating marriage proposal at the end of the trip. Which, of course, could now never happen.

“But maybe you’ll meet someone new!” people said. With everyone’s encouragement, I decided I would do it. I would showcase my newfound independence, impressing everyone with my solo endurance, and maybe I’d even find someone to replace him with—a person who recognized my worth.

This would prove him wrong on two accounts: first, in misjudging me, and second, in leaving me. And what is more, I’d write all about it for him to read—ideally, in an esteemed literary magazine or journal, my first published piece.

*

My tour of vengeance started off quite clumsily: the wedding was difficult to bear alone, my suitcase constantly incurred overweight fees, and I lost both my credit card and my voice by the second week.

Still, I persevered. I booked yoga retreats and meditated in temples. I indulged in the local cuisine, nursing myself back to life. Soon, a cast of suitors even rolled in: an illustrator sketching his first anime, an audacious Australian who bluntly declared I wasn’t as funny as I thought, and a cute flight attendant who shared the same weird taste in music as me.

None of them turned out to be “the One (I’d replace him with),” but I discovered that the most important person I would meet abroad was me.

“She likes cafe-hopping with a good book, or two, or three,” I wrote at the end of my first draft. “Thrift stores are her weakness, even when she doesn’t have any more space in her luggage. She might not speak the local language, but she’s great at pantomiming. High-speed rail makes her giddy. And despite what a certain Australian might say, she has a great sense of humor.”

And while it was all true, it was not 100% the truth.

In my second draft, I practiced more radical honesty. I revealed hidden intentions and shared darker admissions. During the trip, I compulsively took pictures, not merely to look back on later, but to exhibit on social media as crucial evidence of my capabilities. From documentation of a mountain biking trip in Chiangmai (to dispel another incompatibility: my lack of outdoorsiness) to snapshots of exotic foods my ex had always wanted to try, every image was carefully curated to invoke his envy and regret.

It took too long for the irony to dawn on me: this trip intended to spite him, was still a trip for him. What I believed to be a step towards my freedom was actually a retreading of my codependency. His opinion loomed larger than ever, and my heart, in its desperate effort to heal, had misled me. 

Once I recognized what was happening, I discovered and embraced the things that I wanted to do. At Universal Studios Japan, I took advantage of the single-rider lines, going on Space Fantasy three times in a row. I finally admitted to myself that I didn’t really enjoy visiting shrines, and in Seoul, as a vegetarian, I never once felt bad about skipping Korean barbecue. Singledom began to feel good for the first time in my life, and in my concluding paragraph, I still ended on my dreamy-eyed self-description. 

This second attempt was significantly more raw and honest, but as I prepared to hit submit, a wave of uneasiness washed over me yet again.

Whatever draft I sent, the end goal remained the same: get my piece published, catch my ex’s attention, and make my case. Across time and space, I would show him once again that he was wrong about me. Clearly, I’m fine without him, and because I don’t need him anymore, this is when he’ll finally want me back. Right?

Does that sound like independence?

At this point, I know exactly how to spend my weekends. I’m not afraid to go on more solo trips, and I’m also not ashamed to sightsee with others, knowing that both types of travel are fun and serve different purposes. I haven’t dated anyone since him, and if you want to conflate my multi-year single-streak with a degree in autonomy, then by all means.

“It’s been more than two years,” a friend agrees. “You’re definitely independent by now.”

I have to say, I agree. But why then am I still writing this piece?

Maybe in my urgency to discredit him, I didn’t allow myself to fully grieve the loss, causing it to linger over me like an undispellable cloud. What I considered incriminating emotions and guilty thoughts were likely just natural reactions when moving on:

Whenever I post on Instagram, I wonder if he checks. When he’s up on that mountain, climbing all the routes he’s always dreamed of, does he ever wish he was down on the ground with me? When I publish something I write, I can’t help but hope he reads it.

When we were together, I always showed him each new chapter of my novel as soon as it was done. “It’s amazing,” he’d exclaim, a huge grin across his face. I continue to use that image of him smiling as motivation to write. Does that mean I’m still not over him?

Maybe. But maybe it means that the parts of us that intertwined still hold value, even in separation. Sometimes, growing together means growing apart. When he loved me, he wanted me to write, and isn’t that what I want for myself, too? So here I am writing—albeit about him, perhaps to his dismay.

-Emily Zhao

Emily Zhao is a multimedia storyteller and educator based in Brooklyn. She has taught computer science and digital media at NYU’s Courant Institute, Tisch School of the Arts, and with Girls Who Code, and previously worked as a video producer at Scholastic. She is currently completing her debut novel, Maybe Mabel.