a dear sean letter...

dear sean,

i know you will find this letter to be a surprise given the fact that we have not been in contact at all for a couple of years and broke off our relationship over 6 years ago. time is a funny thing - it makes you forget certain things and people and softens your views on bad experiences from the past. it often makes you nostalgic for people and events and helps you look back on situations and relationships as learning experiences from which you gleen wisdom and appreciation. i would like to say that when i look back at the nearly 5 years we dated, i remember that time fondly and focus only on the good times; that when i look back i remember us as silly college kids having fun and falling in love. but i can't. maybe i did for a while, when time had dulled the memories of our arguing, the break-ups, the disrespect you showed me. but something new has come to light, something that just made the real memory of our relationship rear its ugly head.

i now know with 100% certainty that you did, indeed, cheat on me while we were dating. all of those times i suspected it and heard vague rumors that couldn't really be substantiated, you made me feel like i was crazy and jealous and overdramatic. you mindfucked me into believing you and i bought right into it. stupid, on my part, i know but i loved you and wanted to believe that you wouldn't intentionally hurt me. and here it is over 6 years after our breakup and you're still hurting me, still making me feel stupid. when i heard that you got a blowjob from a certain nasty skank on your trip to new orleans - the trip you took when we were dating seriously, the trip you lied to me about when i asked if any girls went, the trip where you did god only knows what else besides let that whore go down on you - i felt like i had been kicked in the stomach. all of the hurt, frustration, anger, and disrespect i felt when we were dating came rushing back to me in full force. i didn't show it, of course. you are certainly not worth the energy it would have taken for me to express any or all of those emotions. i gave up wasting my energy on you years ago. so i sat there, shaking my head and rolling my eyes, calling you many names of the fuckwad, dickhead, idiot-moron-with-no-soul variety and pretended it didn't bother me in the least because, after all, what's done is done. but now i know for sure that you lied to me and i wasn't crazy for worrying about you cheating on me and that all of those times you tore me down, you should have been apologizing for being a bastard.

i hate that i even let it get to me. i hate that you still can hurt me after all these years. and i hate that i let you do that to me - then and now.

i know you've changed, grown up and apologized many times for the way you treated me back then. and i appreciate that about you. but those apologies can never change how badly you treated me, no matter how much time tries to dull the edges of those sharp, bitter memories that have carved a permanent hollow in me.

i don't wish you unhappiness. i just wish you hadn't caused me so much.

andrea