Letter number 11: Clarity.. of sorts.

Dear Alexandra,

I’m really glad that I shared these letters with A. She sent me a lovely email in response, it ended up in my junk email folder. How rude! I was worried that it might have been a mistake, but also that it might reawaken some of the struggles she experienced not that long ago. I needn’t have worried, it was so reassuring to realise the things I’ve been feeling and doing weren’t that strange.

It’s helped me realise that it’s normal for different aspects of your mind to fight with each other. There’s the angry bit, the sad bit, the hopeful bit, there’s a small vindictive bit who I don’t like at all, and there’s a rational bit. There’s probably a myriad of other bits I’ve not identified yet. The rational bit goes through all this thinking “Look, it’s happened. It’s shit. You didn’t deserve it, but you can’t change it. What’s the point in torturing yourself, cut your losses, move on. You will probably actually be better off in the long run.”

Ah logic. I love logic, but unfortunately the more emotional bits of my mind crave answers — how on Earth could you treat somebody this way, how do you sleep knowing that? How could you do the birthday charade with me knowing you’d already started wearing matching fucking bracelets with another bloke? You’d made your choice — your pre-engagement ring was nowhere to be seen.

Ultimately none of those things are going to tell me anything I’ve not already worked out for myself. Of course the why question is one that is buried somewhere in your head, possibly inaccessible even to you. But the why doesn’t really make any difference to the what. I did slip earlier — I looked at your Twitter feed and saw that you are back streaming again. I didn’t click onto the stream though, progress, I think. Of sorts.

I think my next logical step is to block yours and his Twitter accounts from whichever account I might be logged in to. I don’t have several accounts to be deceptive, I should add, I have my personal one, my music blog one and one associated with this blog. I’m not planning on doing this as some kind of tantrum, more a barrier to stop me looking. What am I gaining from basically having a small window in this strange new relationship you started forging before ending ours? Nothing. Just pain. So I shouldn’t look.

If I add an extra step to being able to be nosy, then it will hopefully give me pause to think twice about what I’m doing. I don’t want to block you out of my life, even now. I just don’t want reminders about what you’ve done, what you’re doing — you’re not working through anything, you’ve been working through something and chosen not to confide in me that for whatever reason you couldn’t see a future for us, and you forged your escape route and started it without doing so.

The sad thing is, I wouldn’t have wanted you to feel trapped, to sign up to moving in and whatever came next because you felt you had to. This could have been so much easier for both of us. It’s not like I’ve tried to initiate conversations that this could have slotted into. I just can’t understand that deception, that’s what is consuming me and making me fall into negative patterns.

So yeah, logic brain is starting to cut through a little. A. has really helped me, I shared these letters with S. too, I trust her and she’s been so supportive and I’d held back on giving too much away. I spoke with her when we had issues earlier in lockdown, so she knows things have been tough for us. I wanted her to understand quite why I’ve been so down, because on the face of it a mutual break-up even coupled with the assorted bereavements wouldn’t precipitate this kind of reaction.

I still want to maintain my integrity though — I’m not about to start mass sharing these letters, I don’t think it would be right or fair to you. It’s true you’ve been pushing your friends away systematically too. I know because I asked H. to check in with you in the immediate aftermath of everything, and she didn’t feel that she could because you’d cut her out. I imagine in your self-contained head you think she cut you out. Who knows?

Rational brain is definitely getting a louder voice today. Taking the cheating out of the equation we had some significant challenges — from both sides — that I’m not sure we were equipped to overcome. And that means that whilst this outcome was achieved in the worst possible way from my point of view, it probably is — ultimately — the best outcome. Imagine if you’d moved in, got a job up here and then something like this happened. It would be a mess. Imagine if we’d ended up married and it did — you might’ve ended up with half of my house! Haha, that was a joke.

Maybe that’s what was scaring you — that our next steps were big ones. It could even have been on a subconscious level. But there’s me starting to try to work out reasons, justification. That’s what I need to stop — the reasons don’t really make any difference to the outcome, so I need to move on to the new reality and get used to the idea.

I’m terrified I’ll never meet anyone else, that I’ll end up on my own into old age. But I’ve felt like that before, I can remember that. I’ve certainly learned from my last less damaging break up (which was still hard, and took considerable adjustment) that I’m definitely not going to jump on a Tinder spree any time soon. Oh gosh that wasn’t my proudest few months. Then when I least expected it you breezed into my life.

What I have realised is that I’ve been complicit in your abandonment of our mutual friends — I remember you saying not too long ago how you didn’t miss many people, I reeled off a pretty lengthy list of people who I really missed and meant a lot to me. I’m sure I missed some off too. You kind of agreed, but thinking back now were you trying to steer me away from people too — it seems a strange thing to do when you weren’t prepared to acknowledge my existence in your alternative virtual life.

I wonder when the lustre will dull for this and what your next obsession will be, is that when gamer dude falls by the wayside as you immerse yourself in something new? Ironically despite the spectacular difficulties we’ve experienced with a long distance relationship you’ve picked one now where he’s in another country. Since he’s a little younger than you, also living with parents, I can’t imagine that transport will be easy. Maybe on some level you see that distance as a safety mechanism.

So yeah, Rational Mind can still get shouted down quite easily it seems. Amateur Psychologist Mind is in the chair now seemingly. I just worry, I can accept that your preferred future isn’t us, but I worry that you are repeating a pattern. And I need to realise that, whilst it’s okay to still care, that that really isn’t my problem any more. I really hope that you can talk openly with your Mum or someone else so that somebody real can look out for you.

I love you, Bert