From the Journal: A Letter to my First Heartbreak

May 14, 2023

4:26 AM

To [redacted]

I write this with no intentions of reading this to you, but I am envisioning you standing before me. Everything was fine until it wasn’t. I am writing this to give myself closure, assuming that we will never speak more than three words to each other ever again. I can finally admit that you, in fact, were too good to be true. But firstly, I would like to thank you. Thank you for showing me the kind of affection that I’ve never experienced before, even if it meant nothing to you. I’m sorry for expecting something that was never promised to me—your commitment. I was so focused on keeping you happy that I didn’t realize I was becoming obsessive and driving you away. I ruined my self-esteem and allowed my insecurities to expose themselves to you.

Dwelling on the past and trying to figure out what I could have done to make us work only hinders me from prospering. I cannot continue to act as if your existence is triggering to me. Just like how you can be unbothered by my existence, I need to do the same as well. A part of me wishes that I could delete you from my memories, but that would be the same as suppressing you, right? I often wonder if I was ever in love with you, but I assume love is supposed to feel intensely happy. Fortunately for you, I didn't feel that. I was sexually distracted by you, and to be honest, I never want to feel what I felt with you towards anyone else again.

I was absolutely blinded and looking to fill a void in myself. This heartbreak has made me emotionally numb to those with good intentions and has encouraged a wall to be built around my heart. I've turned sour because our relationship ended up being a repeated cycle of the honeymoon phase, developing feelings, and then being left without an explanation. All I ever wanted from you was explanations about your feelings, but you remained a closed book. Now, I'm stuck trying to understand how you can do it so easily for someone else. But I guess that's all part of the cycle. I don't expect a response from this because, again, you are never going to see this. But I needed this as a form of closure and to finally put an end to this. With that being said, I bid you farewell, and from this point on, you are just somebody I used to know.

Goodbye, [redacted]

Almost three years ago, at 4:26 in the morning, I sat in my dorm room writing a goodbye letter to someone who I wasn't speaking to anymore and knew would never read it. But I wasn’t writing for him, I was writing for the version of myself that desperately needed to let go. To give some context, this person was my first college romance, and this “relationship” perfectly captured the true essence of a situationship. It included all of the intimate actions without the committment. I’m a bit ashamed to say this went on (and off) for two years. I so badly wanted it to work and gave every ounce of patience I could give until enough was enough. My peers were sick and tired of having to hear me talk about him and eventually told me that it was time to “get over it.” I was mostly upset about the fact that I never got a proper ending from him and at the time, I felt like that was the LEAST he could do for me.

Back then, I thought closure meant having a clear understanding on why things ended. Now I understand that closure sometimes means accepting that you will never get the explanation you hoped for. Reading this now, I can hear how exhausted and regretful was. Though I was writing about him, this journal entry was also about me trying to understand why I stayed in a cycle that kept hurting me. I was trying to earn clarity from someone who had already decided not to give it. I didn’t realize that my obsession with understanding him was distracting me from wanting more and better for myself. Back then, I could say that I was hurt about him not choosing me after everything. For what it was worth, I was willing to give up so much of my emotional energy to someone who existed mostly in potential, and I ended up mourning the possibility of being in a relationship with him.

Towards the end of the entry, I recall myself wanting to retreat from future intimacy, like many young, heartbroken people do. Truthfully, I do want love, but because I know that I could confuse attention with affection and chemistry with emotional safety, it made me want to take several steps back and tread carefully.

Looking back almost three years later, that letter allowed me to lock the door on someone who closed it on me without a notice. It served as a mental umbrella from the rain that poured down, and shielded me from future storms. It was the first quiet goodbye to the version of myself that allowed love to be confusing. I learned closure wasn’t always going to provide answers, or apologies, but it gives you the realization that you no longer need either.