A Letter to My Past

Welcome back Faithfuls. I hope you took a minute to reflect where we left off last week.  If you missed any part of the story, I suggest starting here before going forward.

But you’re just a boy
You don’t understand
Yeah, you don’t understand, oh
How it feels to love a girl, someday
You’ll wish you were a better man

You don’t listen to her
You don’t care how it hurts
Until you lose the one you wanted
‘Cause you’ve taken her for granted
And everything you have got destroyed

But you’re just a boy…

King Beyonce said it best, you’re just a boy and you don’t understand. The weight of those words hit differently in 2020. For majority of my together forever but not really, I asked My Past to flex his emotional intelligence. Remember this is a guy who emotes so I thought it would come naturally. On any given day I cycled through the peaks and valleys of his particular feels related to things as simple as a middle school basketball game he felt he coached poorly. It baffled me the level of introspection shown to important in the moment but not life altering happenings. They received the bulk of his emotional capacity.  I never quite wrapped my mind around the disconnect between his ability to intensely feel those moments almost to the point of haunting his movements today but nonchalantly brush off the destruction of relationships and completely ignore the responsibility of husband. But he’s just a boy and he can’t understand what it means to love a girl…one day he’ll try to be a better man. I truly hope My Past begins to give relationships the emotional rigor they require. That he abandons internalized self-doubt built on narratives he created about himself based on what he thinks others think about him. Most days I felt like a therapist. The other days I felt like a mom…when all I really wanted was to feel like a loved wife. But I digress.

Flash back to the beginning, when times were good or more accurately, I was better at ignoring the fires. At the time, I loved the emotion he conjured for the minor goings-on that I misread as passion. I thought, finally I found a man not afraid to be open. He shared his stories. Some funny and others dark that if I were an emoting person, tears would have fallen. Instead, I was taken aback that someone who I didn’t know well would open himself raw in front of me, it made me feel fiercely protective of those stories and acutely responsible for his happiness in a way that resonates with my particular brand of fixing. I came to realize that nothing about him sharing those stories made me special. My Past’s an over-sharer by nature and to maintain space and relevance with people, he must showcase the most endearing pieces of himself. What’s left are pipe dreams, video games, conspiracy theories, and YouTube videos…except his cooking. I will say it again, My Past is the most attractive behind the steam of the stove. That’s where it began and ended for me.

Once he no longer wanted to, all those stories and happiness I felt so responsible for…vanished. I loved the boy with the traumatic past but not the man actively living and, in some ways, pursuing a traumatic life. It cost me more than it was worth. My time with The Anti-Husband was a futile effort in healing the wounded boy in the man. You read his letter, it’s manic and juvenile at best. I came to realize I married a weak-willed man child. That’s my fault. I accept the responsibility of that decision and the hurt it’s caused me and others. I recognize my vanity, my belief so strongly in my ability to fix the broken I ignored the obvious.  I will, however, never take responsibility for My Past’s behavior. But we do know that hurt people, hurt people.

So many of these thoughts swirled in my head through the hazy lens of tequila while sunbathing on a beach in Tulum mid-September. I cried, maybe alcohol induced, at night to avoid recapping all my shit with Nursing Chocolate who said almost verbatim one night, I have no clue why you were with that fat worthless fuck for as long as you were. Looked around the table at the ladies and continued with, y’all need to stop being stupid bitches for these men that are barely that. Can’t pay your way, his way, or no way and have nothing to offer but basic conversation and lazy dick. Do better! This was said with love. Remember he poured into my depleted cups before the trip, this particular advice was laced with island wine, so we received it with no chaser. Not that he’s wrong and I needed to hear that I deserved more than the crumbs. Nursing Chocolate suggested I pen a letter back to My Past; you know free my tongue so long shackled by the obligation of together. I never did write the letter, but I did respond to an impromptu text. And if I were to combine the two efforts it might read something like this:

Dear Nino Brown of Sugared Beverages,

Thank you for the experience. I’m positive you believe you love(d) me but as the saying goes love is an action, it stretches far beyond a thought. It has been clear to me for some time that you don’t have the capacity to love me. Vanity kept me with you, that is my lesson to learn. Hopefully you will do better by the next, recognizing that showing up and doing the work is more important than laughing at jokes. I was foolish to trust your words and ignore your behavior.

You’re a nice person but you’re not kind. Selfishness can’t exist where kindness lives. I’m the opposite and I guess there’s some truth to opposites attracting. As a result, there was always an end date written for us, and it was never forever.

It is my sincerest hope that you gain the ability to actually love someone the way she deserves. I hope it was worth it.

Take Care,

Faith M.

By the close of the trip, I hired an attorney and began the formal process of separating myself from My Past on paper. Trust me, getting into a marriage is far easier than getting out of one. But what says you Faithfuls, when you had time to go over the hills and valleys of your past relationships is there anything you left unsaid to someone? Have you ever felt like you were playing the role of therapist and parent rather than partner? Is that part of the significant other’s ministry…counselor? Know there’s more where this came from so stay tuned for the next installment. Speak on it in the comments, in the meantime, and between time, please share, like, comment, and subscribe…isn’t that what we do on this here interweb.

Remember to share is to care and hashish.

P.S. This is still a stifled tongue. I struggle with adequately detailing some of the feelings I had about My Past. I never wanted to be a person that caused him pain. We are such different people. For today, while I process how to tell y’all what honestly sits at the center of why I couldn’t give any more know it starts and ends with me not being able to see My Past as a man any longer after his birthday trip to LA in 2018. It unraveled my perception of him and distorted ever seeing him as my husband forever.