Dear Ex,

Dear Ex,

I know I promised we could be friends, that this platonic relationship was alright with me. When we started talking after my last break up I thought it was possible. Talking to you feels so natural. It's like I'm talking to a different me, my soul in a different body with slightly different perspectives.

We have the same taste in music, people, humor, food, and even art. I like that you appreciate the value of sadness, it's something I could never understand when we were together all those years ago. Two depressed people, one of which was in a state of denial, trying to drown my emptiness rather than feel what was hiding in the darkness.

While we were talking over the summer I listened to so much new music that you recommended. I loved it all. None of my other friends like sad music, but it touches on something that other forms of music simply can't reach. There is divinity in longing. Or is it rather that there is a longing for the divine? A longing to be whole...

I always felt happy while we talked, and after too. I told you I was OK being friends, but that sometimes I imagine us getting together. That was a weak and unfair thing for me to say, as deleterious to you as it was to me. While we talked every day and pretended to be friends, I was plunging back into the ecstasy of a future fantasy with you.

While I would love to just be friends with you, I can't. Even after years of separation, I find myself back where I was the first day we met: a lost boy with an intense longing to be with you, convinced that our union will make me right. I feel this even with the knowledge I've gained since then that happiness is always found within.

After you read my story I was surprised by your response. I never should have shown it to you, it was my mistake. I thought you were over me, even if you wanted me in your life, but perhaps you can never be over the idea that I can move on. I can't help but feel I was only just a friend to you. That's why I thought I could show you the sad love story I wrote. It wasn't about you, but because you were so convinced the woman in the story was you, I have to believe you know just how infatuated I've been with you even after our breakup. Do you still see a head-over-heels boy who only imagines ever being with you? Who is heartbroken forever because he can't be with the person he loves?

It's true on some level, but if that's the case then you know we can't be friends.

I will admit it sounds dramatic to say "we can never be friends". But that's what I believed all those years ago and you wouldn't let me go. This time I think you understand. Our silence speaks volumes.

I care about you very much and I hope you are happy wherever you are. But I also hope that I never see your freckled face and blue eyes ever again. I don't ever want to get over you again and falling back with you can be triggered by a simple meeting of the eyes.

Goodbye.

-T