Dear Ex-Girlfriend Redux
Congratulations.
Dear Ex-Girlfriend,
I can’t believe you actually did it: you broke my heart again.
When you called me crying and we talked for over two hours and I told you I loved you and you told me it was over and I begged you not to leave me and you did it anyways, it felt as if my world lost all color.
Your words came unexpected, and they came fast, and they came hard. When you called me, I thought it would be just another day in the life of Ellie and her lovely little blue-haired girl — but instead, what I expected to be two hours of reaffirmed love and reassurance ended up taking a dark, dark turn.
Seven minutes ago.
“I’m breaking up with you.”
Seven months ago.
I wrote you my first letter back in July.
The Ellie of seven months ago is, no matter how much I refuse to believe it, almost the exact same as the Ellie of seven minutes ago. Her favorite pastime is day-drinking, and her thoughts are consumed by memories of what once was. She rewinds time over and over again to that fateful day in November, unable to forgive and forget the lovely little blue-haired girl who always made her day.
Both Ellies are hopelessly in love with that lovely little blue-haired girl. They wait for her endlessly, hoping that she’ll realize that perfect realization of love she all but wished away. They wear rose-tinted glasses and refuse to see the blue-haired girl as anything other than perfect and tell everybody they know of how much they love and cherish her. They both ignore every voice that tells them that she would never love them the same way, that she would never cherish them the same way, that she would always always always leave them bent and broken in every single universe.
They are the same in almost every way. Their worst mistakes and greatest decisions are letting that blue-haired girl into their lives. Their worst mistakes and greatest decisions are falling in love.
But the Ellie of today is, in many ways, outstandingly different from the Ellie of seven months ago. The Ellie of last year, her version of Em* disappeared just four months prior, no word or warning, and every day since then had felt like rainstorms and radio static. My version of Em disappeared just now, every word and warning, and I know that I will replay that moment over and over again forever.
Hour One: Denial.
The Ellie of seven minutes ago will wait patiently for her love to come back to her, just as the Ellie of seven months ago did.
It’ll only be a few weeks, perhaps a few months, I tell myself, before she comes back to me. It’s getting close to Valentine’s Day, and my little valentine will come back to me. I know it. Because she always does. Every single time, in every single universe, I just know in my heart that she will always come back to me.
Until then, I’ll keep writing about her, writing about the time we had together, writing about the life we never got to have. Em, I still want that for us. I will always want that for us.
I made a promise that I would keep writing about you until there’s a piece for every star in the sky — and even then, I know it wouldn’t be enough to really show how much you mean, or at least how much you meant, to me.
My memories of you, infused with the ink of my words and my letters, will forever be washed in black and white.
Perhaps this letter will be my last to you. I hope this one will be, because every time I write about you, my heart gets tangled up in a web of truths and lies about you and me, but I know it won’t.
Because I love you too much.
I love you too much for my own good. I love you so much that it fucking hurts.
Hour Four: Anger.
I know how this game works, already. We played it this time last year when you first disappeared from my life. I agonized over you every single day in the that first half of 2024, but there are days that will forever be seared into my mind. Should I write those dates into the schedule for this year, too?
March 13th. The night that my demons came to face me. They will come to face me again when that fateful day comes. (I did not win last time, and I will not this time, either.)
June 1st. The day that I wrote Dear Ex-Girlfriend. Another letter will rise from the ashes of Ellie’s bent and broken heart, another addressed to you. You will not read it, either.
August 3rd. The decision that sparked our second attempt at this great star-crossed love. I will write to you again for our third attempt.
But this is the first time you’ve ever actually said the words.
“I’m breaking up with you.”
So perhaps this year will be different. Maybe there will be no March 13th, no June 1st, no August 3rd, no Ellie and her lovely little blue-haired girl.
Did it come easy for you, saying those words? Did it come easy when you told me, “I never loved you.” Did you mean it? Did you mean all those times you ever said to me that you did — that you did, in fact, “love” me?
“I hated you.” You told me that when you broke up with me. “I never loved you.”
“I hated you.”
“I hated you.”
I’m never letting go of you, I said. And so you let me go instead.
It’s an excruciating challenge for me to admit that many of my memories of our relationship are based on a romantic bastardization of what it actually was. I continue to see it as perfect, oh so irresistibly perfect; I continue to see you as oh so irresistibly perfect. I know, deep down, it wasn’t — no relationship is. (I know, deep down, you aren’t.) It was messy and complicated and difficult and ... and fucked up. And I fucking loved it. I reveled in it.
If I’m going to be honest, I thank you for saying those words to me. Because it’s the closure I never got from you the first time we played this game. I needed that desperately last year, and you denied me it, but I thank you for giving it to me this time around. It gives me the opportunity to hate you for what you did to me, for all the times you hurt me all of the time we were together and all of the time we weren’t.
Of course, I’m not taking the bait: I know you only said that to hurt me.
“I hated you. I never loved you.”
I love you, I will always love you. And I fucking hate you for making me love you.
Did you know, all of my friends rejoiced when they learned that we broke up. Every. Single. Fucking. One. Of. Them.
I would have done anything for you.
But now? I don’t know, Em. My love for you was unending, but you found a way to end it, anyways.
Hour Eight: Bargaining.
It’s around that time of the year, too, when you last left me. It’s a heartbreaking realization, coming to the conclusion that the universe won’t allow us to last past January.
Perhaps we’re destined to meet again next fall. But we’re ice and fire: we’ll love each other so much that it hurts too much to go on. I know you said we won’t, I know you said that it’s over, but I will never stop thinking about the possibility of it all. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you. I don’t think it’s hit me yet that it’s truly over — for good and for ill, this time.
We found each other at the wrong place and at the wrong time. You weren’t in a place to love me the way I loved you, and maybe you never will be. (And that’s okay.) I would have given you every part of me, but I know you wouldn’t have done the same for me. And I wasn’t in a place to give you what you wanted — that space, that absence of commitment, that exclusivity — and maybe I never will be. (And maybe that’s not okay for me.)
The right place would have brought us together. I could have been there at your college, or you could have been here at MIT, or we could have been anywhere at any time but here — as long as it was with each other. The right time would have brought us to the same place. You could love me the way I needed you to, and I could give you all the things you needed from me in return.
Do you think we could have met at the right place and at the right time? Do you think we still can? I’m going to count down the days until we do, if we do.
When I heal from this — if I heal from this — I will hope for the best for you.
I will hope that you find someone else to replace me with.
I will hope they treat you better than I ever could.
I will hope that you’re happy with them.
But even still, my selfishness will take over: because I will wish you good, but not the best. I will wish you never find someone to truly fill that hole in your heart that I leave behind. I will wish you think of me when you see them. I will wish you may never be happier with them than you were with me.
I can’t help but wish I could just press rewind back to November, to experience falling in love with you for the first time all over again, to experience life from when my world was still in color.
Hour Sixteen: Depression.
I will never stop thinking about the what ifs. We have so many what ifs that may never get answered.
Em, I don’t know how to go on without you. I don’t know how to say it any other way. I wish I could: I wish I could be much more delicate with this and say it in a pretty and romantic way but goddammit there’s nothing pretty or romantic with this, and all I can think about is you, goddammit, all I can think about is you and I hate you for this.
I will never stop thinking about all the things we could have done together, all the things we never got to do together. There are so many things I never got to do with you.
I never got to see your room. I never got to spend Valentine’s Day with you. I never got to see a drawing you made of me.
I will never get to graduate with you. I will never get to move in with you. I will never get to marry you.
And we never did get to watch Songbirds & Snakes, did we?
And I never got to truly show you how much you mean to me. I don’t know if I would have been able to, even if I had the chance.
Hour Forty-Four: Acceptance.
Here is where I say goodbye, I think. At least, I’m supposed to. If it were up to me, I would never have to say goodbye to you. I would never have to let you go. But I understand that you need me to let go.
In another life, perhaps this would have worked, you and me.
My heart is bound to yours.
My love is yours.
I said I love you, and you said it back.
And then I ended the call.
Forever yours,
Ellie
***
“I’m going to ask you again: are you breaking up with me, yes or no?”
“Yes, I’m breaking up with you.”
“Okay. I love you.”
“I love you too—”
—Click.