I’m still reading your journal. When I was at your computer that last time, I didn’t just send myself everything you’d written. I gave myself view permissions to the whole notebook, so whatever you write there now is shared with me. Reading the bluster, the reflection, and the pain these past months, I find myself asking over and over again: do you know?

On the anniversary of my mother’s death, you likened me to a tumor you had cut out, and I felt like I had been ripped open. I couldn’t decide: were you too stupid to know I could see it, or were you deliberately trying to hurt me? I kept wishing I could believe you were dumb—it would have made everything so much easier. But my general impression is that you have, instead, become (and remain) horribly cruel. You want to punish me: to make me bleed, make me cry. And you’ve succeeded, time after time.

Your absence from my life leaves its own wound in me, even still, but an expected one under the circumstances. Keeping this line of communication is different, like a festering abscess. You throw words at me like knives; we share the continued cold intimacy of watching each other through one-way glass. Of course I still want to know what you’re thinking. What do you get out of letting me in?

Consider this: if you care enough to hurt me, you care.

I’m no stranger to taking pleasure in another’s pain, even someone who cares about me. (Especially someone who cares about me.) But if, as you claim, I was the toxic one, the unhealthy one, the horrible one? Be healthier. Be stronger. Claim the moral high ground.

Be the better person, and grant me the mercy of cutting me off one last time.

Since you won’t hold me, let me go.

I miss you, and I hate it.

It’s so stupid to miss you. I clearly remember all the things about you I couldn’t stand: you singing along to songs you didn’t know, ignoring the ideas I tried to share with you, dismissing my feelings whenever they were different from what you might expect. I couldn’t trust you, because you weren’t trustworthy. You were often more like a child than a partner. While I loved taking care of you, when I needed to be taken care of, you essentially told me I didn’t deserve it and you let me down, time after time.

I remember being ashamed of you. Ashamed of myself for being with you. Angry that you settled for so little and were in so many ways a passive observer to your own life. I thought your hobbies were stupid and your friends were generally pretty lame. You were dumber than me, less thoughtful, less rational and less reasonable. You were unhappy with yourself and I got blamed for it.

I wanted to leave and find a better partnership; I’d planned to multiple times but I couldn’t. I was so drawn to you. When you listened to me, when you touched me, when I came home to you, it was heaven. It was home! I was home.

Now, when I am alone with my thoughts I miss you. I dream about you. You are the love of my life, and for this shell of who you were to walk around without love for me in your heart rips me apart. As it did when we were still together. It was horrible. It is still.

Why did you give up on us? We were meant to be for so much longer than we were. I hate you for burrowing into me this way, for all the broken promises you failed to keep. And yet, if you came to me tomorrow I can’t say I wouldn’t take you into my arms for the rest of our lives, and be sure this time to never let you go.

I’ve told you many times, and it is true: you are everything I want in a partner.

Our union is often boring because we get along so well. What do we have to discuss when we agree on almost everything, and on everything of substance? Why would I worry about losing you when you are so present, so caring, so clearly invested in me and in us? There’s no second-guessing, no uncertainty, no anxiety. I can trust you and you are mine, and that’s that.

I don’t know how to love like this, though. Do you know how scary it is to not see an end in sight, just an endless horizon with quiet evenings and loud outings and inside jokes? Maybe a baby or two with red hair? The devotion in your eyes when you stare at me like I am the treasure under the X on your life’s map—I am afraid to be so valued. I’m worried I’ve fooled you.

Maybe I feel most deeply against the current. I have a cat that scratches his way out of my arms as often as he enjoys being held, after all. I romanticize ghosts more than the living. I haven’t seen a relationship without fire, without tears caused by each other, without the pain. It all sounds so dull, just being happy. Fitting together like adjacent puzzle pieces. Being on the same page and wanting the same things and you wanting me just a little bit more.

My love for you feels like an afterthought. And of course I do; this is not a binary, love is necessary but not sufficient, shared values are necessary but not sufficient, me thinking you are the most amazing person I have ever had the pleasure to get to know is on some level perhaps not enough.

You could fit with anyone. You don’t expect perfection and as a result ours is wasted on the two of us. I feel guilty but I feel irrelevant too. You don’t need me to complete you. It doesn’t seem to matter much, in the grand scheme of things, if I stay.

You would win, but you won’t fight for me because that isn’t the kind of relationship you want. My immaturity wants it, and you can’t relate. You are healthy, you are calm. You will heal easily if it comes to that. If it doesn’t, we will be as perfect as I’m capable of, which I believe only you can inspire me to. If I were a better person, in a different space, it would be more than I could ever hope for.

As I am, I count the days and months and I wait, not for you, but with you.