Thank you. No really, I mean it! Thank you for the MANY lessons you taught me. Sorry I left you, although I know we both agree it was for the best.
It was so important for me to know you, and love you, and leave you. Although it was never my intention, finding out you were not the one for me was perhaps the best clue I could find along the maze of finding out who I am. As you are well aware, that has been the hardest thing about "growing up." Amongst the infinite choices of who to be, where to go, what to do and how to do it, I have often times found myself completely overwhelmed with the endless decisions and commitments to be made. Although confident I would be successful at each chosen endeavor, my satisfaction with the choice was always the wild card.
At this point you're probably nodding your head and getting increasingly irritated. But before you get too pissed, know I'm not talking about you...entirely. It's true that you did pursue me. It's true that I was uncertain. It's true that most of the time I was playing catch up. But while I was trying to learn about you, and beginning to see the beauty and warts that you posessed, I was also trying to navigate my youth. Chances are, you arrived at precisely the moment I needed to choose the next turn in my life. I blame boundary issues for letting myself be distracted by you. Perhaps I would have been able to sense out the inherent shortcomings between the two of us if I had not been so busy navigating the roller coaster of my twenties (and, briefly, teens).
I asked my boyfriend what he expected "me" to be like (the hypothetical me, that is). He said he had no preconceptions, other than that "I" be smart. He just waited for it to feel right. Initially flabbergasted, I felt defensive towards the serial monogamy that litters my history. But then I realized, that the sense he was using to filter out the ones that came before me, was exactly the sense that it took me all this time to develop. I may have been great at managing my finances. I may be as clean and organized as they come. I've owned a condo, travelled the world and partied like it's still 1999. But when it came to interpreting my heart, I was as clueless as they come.
I met you, I liked you, or at least you piqued my curiosity. I thought I'd like to know more. You thought you were in love. And the relationship floated on at its own leisure from there. This is not to say I did not love you. I did.
It's just that your ultimate contribution to me has been to help me develop that sense. You took a funnel that was far too expansive and helped me whittle it down to a size that somehow located my partner and only let him slip through.
From you I learned that I loved:
- reading your poetry and learning how to drive a stick
- watching you surf, line-dance and drive motorcycles in nothing but board shorts
- talking for hours about everything from politics to pot
- being showered with gifts of thoughtfulness and goodies
- letting you be my tour guide and finally be able to let go of the wheel for awhile
- embracing my cowboy roots
- spooning
- playing house
- being best friends and playing together
From you I learned that I hated:
- being talked to like an idiot
- dealing with a family that acts like a jealous girlfriend when you hang out with your girlfriend
- watching you kill yourself as you continued to add new addictions to your laundry list of bad habits everyday
- not being able to talk about what's really going on
- having to dumb down the conversation to help you keep up
- hearing you were a wreck of a person and that I should steer clear, but I should have listened anyways
- being suffocated and that if you love me after 3 days, that's fine. But if you can't stop yourself from telling me after 3 days, that I should run...fast.
- watching movies
- trying to invent chemistry where there was none to be found
I could go on. But we already know that long, drawn out story. Suffice it to say:
You walked away.
You hid.
You chased me off.
You continue to push me away and pull me back.
You are done.
You are a parent.
You are a monster.
You are a friend.
You want the best for me.
We did the best we could. We were not right for each other. We learned these mistakes and truths together. And all of these little and big discoveries while time consuming and, at times, painful, combined to form the tapestry that finally provided me with a clear picture of the kind of man I wanted to join me through this maze we call life.
And now here I stand. Finally free from your ghost. Finally content, with that sense and knowledge that the one I'm with is the one that I can stay with; the only one I want to be with. And I know I would never have found him without you and you and you and you and you and you and you and you and you.
Thank you,
Shea Marie
