Painting by Carsten Weitzmann represented by Jarmuschek & Partner Gallery

It was the morning of your birthday when I told you that I wished you all the best in the world and vowed to stick by your side no matter what. I could barely make out the letters on my phone screen when I rushed to write you that, hoping to be the first to greet you on your special day. It turned out that I was.

Later that morning I took my usual seat next to you and smiled. The corners of your mouth slowly twitched into a grin, the same one you do almost everyday, before you leaned back and stared at me. You always did that. It was something I wasn’t entirely comfortable with you doing but it made me feel wanted. I didn’t realize that that was the last time you were going to look me straight in the eye. I wouldn’t have lowered my face and chosen to text my friends.

But I didn’t know.

I didn’t know that, the following day, you weren’t going to be in your usual seat laughing at some joke one of your friends told. I didn’t know that you were doing everything you could to avoid me. I didn’t know that you were going to miss our thirty-minute break to stay clear from me and I didn’t know that you were going to walk straight down the hallway that afternoon and act as if you hadn’t seen me draw my eyebrows together in confusion, wondering why you were acting so weird. And hell, I wasn’t prepared for your arm to brush against mine only by accident.

At that moment, I knew there was something wrong.

The days passed as you grew colder and I was on the verge of losing it. You wouldn’t speak to me, you never looked at me, and you acted like you never knew me.

Sweetheart, to tell you honestly, it was the most painful thing.

That moment solidified the fact that we were finished. We were done. The memories never happened, the innocent promises were already tucked inside the box, the friendship was an illusion, and you happened to be an ugly joke that I never really got.

But you know what? I was fortunate that you left me.

I became a mess of a human being who couldn’t do anything. Late at night, when everyone was fast asleep, I cried. My tears were for the broken pieces of myself that I refused to pick up off the floor. They were for the dreams and promises we shared at two in the morning when you couldn’t sleep although you were dead tired. They were for the woman I had become, happy and content, before she faded away. They were for me, for us. But most importantly, my love, they were for you.

Those tears taught me that it’s perfectly human to not be okay. It was the first stage of my so-called retribution. I cried out all of my expectations, fantasies, hopes, dreams and everything else that connected me to you. It allowed me to create space inside my system that I planned to fill with the things would shape me into something stronger. It was the quickest way to drain you out of my system.

Then I slowly built myself up brick by brick. It was the hardest thing to do and you know why? Because I fixated myself on the idea that I needed you to feel whole.

I’m going to admit that you are the artist behind the strong woman who is writing this open letter right now. Congratulations, sweetheart, you made a masterpiece. I now do believe that pain changes people. It changes a person’s desire for the things that make her happy. It alters her views and opinions. It leaves her grasping for the bigger picture and it makes her the person she is supposed to be.

I changed, didn’t I?

To the man who fortunately left me, I thank you for what you did. You broke me way beyond my limits, but it awakened something else inside of me that was crushed when you came into my life.

That wonderful thing I now have is self-love. Sure, it was hard when you left me hanging ten thousand miles in the air but it would’ve been harder if I chose to spiral down with you.

To the man who fortunately left me, I hope you’re happy now because I know I am. You think I lost an important part of me when you left and there is some truth to that. I would never be able to lose something that wasn’t mine in the first place. The same thing as why nobody else can complete the missing pieces inside of me. I will do it. I will be the one to heal my wounds till no more blood comes out.

To the man who fortunately left me, I love you but, for now, I am choosing to love myself.

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Painting by Catrin Walz Stein

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