Unsent Letters To My Exes
A twist on the original question:
What do you wish you could tell your ex?
How many times have I asked myself this question? I mean, haven’t you a little bit too? I imagine myself whilst pondering this question, somehow Patrick Swayze-ing around my past self; a ghost version of myself screaming into my past, less wrinkled face to wake up and stop flogging epically dead horses.
I have often wanted to write to my exes, explain myself or offer insights into our demise. This just seems like a way of doing it without any of them reading it and/or being offended by my dissection of the relationship. We had reasons for being together and we had bigger reasons for falling apart. Come on, surely, I don’t regret ALL of them? No of course not, each one has been relevant, important and full of love - or at least something that resembled those complicated feelings at the time.
So here are letters to my exes. To protect their identities and also so that they don’t come looking for me to offer an unsatisfying whack, I will use fake names.
Age 19
Dear Tania
I met you when I was brimming with hope and excited to be alive. My little demons of self-loathing gently bubbling under the surface. Like a stalker I admit I worked too hard to secure love back. I’m sorry, you probably really needed to have less of me, hounding you and begging restlessly to be tolerated at most. I remember experiencing and exploring with you, your ‘salmon surprise’ was a sprinkle of salt on top. It was never that special to be honest, but I remember you liked my congratulations. I met your family, stood in the cold in the east side of the country whilst you left me alone to fend for myself. I drove you around, like the chauffeur Miss Daisy pretended to like. And when all was done, I looked back at that time, like I had needed you, but really…you had needed me. I was the metal in the nail being banged through the 100-foot wall, I helped you feel loved. I’m glad about that but I wish you had worked out that I needed it too. I hope you are happy now because you weren’t then.
Ps.
You stole that green jacket I bought in Amsterdam. I really would like that back but it’s likely not to fit me anymore, so I’ll let it slide
Age 23
Dear Nic
Wow. When I met you, I think my heart metaphorically resuscitated? Gone were all those feelings about whatshername because you arrived. Brown eyes like chocolate buttons, you were playful with me, you opened my mind to Tegan and Sara, Death cab, bloc party! Your cd mixtapes are still under my bed, I saw so many bands live because you educated me into fascination. You showed me I could go to colder places and enjoy them as much as laying about on a towel with a gin in my hand! So, you remember that guy in Vancouver who ruined the sunset by masturbating next to us?!
I thank you for making me feel remarkable. You did smoke a little too much and we fizzled away from each other, the distance between us made me feel like snakes were writhing in my stomach and eating away at my organs. I wrote so many songs about how much I felt like that yet, you even blindly played Ukulele as I sang the words desperately ‘Can you still feel me inside you, I’ve been trying to find you, but you’ve fallen away from me’. I never told you I wrote them about us. My God the love was there. I know you’re getting married soon, and I’m really happy for you. I would be lying if I said my stomach didn’t hurt a little when you told me. I think we hugged for a long time at that moment. You really do deserve this, but I’m still a little sad that I never re-found you. Also, you made the best cocktails, and we had the same size feet, so our converse collection was amazing!
Age 29
Dear Caro
If only being someone’s muse was enough. The best of friends. For seven years I held your hand like it was almost my own. Your superb kindness and loyalty was like a chain around my neck. I stayed because the thought of leaving your beautiful soul hurt me too much. How selfish of me. You deserved better than that. You should have had someone in your bed that ran like a horny badger in the night to get to your body. But really, I was stuck, my cartoon addictions and inability to say ‘I don’t think this is working’ was toxic. I didn’t like how I spoke to you. I didn’t like how I was with you. I didn’t like how I needed to drink wine every day. I didn’t like that I wanted to leave when I was sat next to you. I didn’t like that I had already left
Ps.
I’m so glad you’re still my best friend
Embarrassingly I have left a few exes out, some not worth remembering shall we say. Some that left visible bruises, some that gaslit the sky and left burdens for me to feel gently and insidiously. The truth is we cannot regret them all can we? Can we even regret one of them? Because despite the haunting scars that remain, despite the squirming anger because time past and you can’t have it back, despite the sickening grief they left in each corner, there were still moments we enjoyed and I don’t know if I’d be me without any of them, because they brought me to you.
Age 37
Dear You
I was talking to myself in the car today, you know how I like to chat to myself, often pretending I’m all the members of the original Take That line up, discussing the Robbie/Gary feud. Anyway, I was saying that what I want to say to you is… when we used to meet up when we first started dating at that pub in Bedminster, I know I was closed and didn’t/couldn’t give you all of me. I was grieving and skeleton like, not able to trust or be completely myself. And you held on, held me up, respected my need to grieve and break and hurt. You were relentlessly strong for me and forgiving and warm. Never letting me push you away even when I know it was tempting. And how I am wholeheartedly repaired and back together and completely myself with you. We laugh and challenge, bang our heads together like boisterous stags! But love and listen and give each other space and time. We are a unit but completely separate and I am so in love with you.
And so what I know about relationships, what I wished I could say to my past self? What would be the point in saying anything? I rode those waves willingly, self-sacrificing, looking for myself through the eyes of every enriching, heart wrenching, glistening riptide. I stumbled lifelessly through my twenties, walked like an extra from the walking dead into each one of their arms.
I was so desperate for love back then. I wanted to have the Hugh Grant experience, wanted Lloyd Dobler with giant knockers to stand outside my window with a boombox. I looked for love in hollow places and seemed to manufacture and imagine it in most of my interactions. I might as well have stood with a sign saying, ‘please I beg you, for the love of god… love me.’ I laugh now because I know this was true together with a belief where really deep down, I believed that I wasn’t deserving of it either.
Well, after years of self-reflection, months of self-indulgent conversations with my counsellor I can say now that for 37 years I was completely wrong. I deserve it so much. And to my gorgeous exes. You deserved me too!
I invite you to write a letter to your exes, it might just make you realise how much you might have needed them to be exactly who you are now.
Written by Abigail Mansfield
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