all in my head

a: I lied to you for years that we’d be together, when I knew we wouldn’t ever be together forever

b: I don’t believe it. That may be the way that you’ve chosen to remember it, but through the pain and struggle; we were in love and we had something that was so very special.

a: of course you think that because you were the one that got all my support. I spent all my energy trying to help you, but you gave me nothing. it was great for you because you were the center of everything, and I was the one that paid for it all

b: I want to believe that I was able to offer you something that you wanted

a: believe whatever you want to believe, but believing doesn’t change the way things really were for me. it got worse and worse and there was no end in sight. there’s still no end to it. you are still struggling. I can’t help you with that. I don’t want to help you with that. I’m a happy person, but with you I was miserable. I’m not miserable now that I ended things. I have time for the things I love to do and I have someone in my life that loves me. I am with someone that is happy and we’re happy together. you can’t offer that to me. you never gave that to me. you couldn’t.

a: Of course, you still love me. While you struggled, I was there to support you. But, who was there to support me? My heart was breaking for years while you struggled and seemed to make no progress of any kind except to fall further into depression and while everything around you fell apart. Well, my love fell apart too. I felt like every time I tried to help you, a part of me died. Trying to love you was like chopping my limbs off. I became a tin woodman trying to support you while you gave me nothing back. So, yes, your heart is breaking, but I can’t help you any more. Maybe your heart will take as long to break as mine did, but somehow I doubt it. Part of me hopes that it does, so you can feel what it was like to be with you. But, I don’t want to hate you. Part of why I knew it was time to go is because I started to hate you. I resented you.

a: Your heart may take as long to break as mine did, but my fear is that you’ll find someone new to support you and you’ll forget to do your work. You will find someone new and fall back into the same pattern again. That same pattern you seem to have fallen into with me, and you would probably fall back into if I actually did come back to you. That pattern is one where you avoid fixing what’s wrong by taking someone else apart, bit by bit, piece by piece. That’s what it felt like for me. So, yes, you want me back because you are in pain, but I can’t help you any more. You have to figure this out yourself. I tried to help you, but I couldn’t.

a: my love and approval made you feel good about yourself, and when things got hard you became a monster because you no longer felt good about yourself no matter what I said or did to prove to you otherwise. I exhausted myself trying to help you feel good about yourself. But, you are the only one that can do that. I never could be more than a temporary boost to you, and you wasted the time we had together feeling sorry for yourself when you should have worked hard.

a: You failed to work your ass off to save things when we were together. I worked my ass off trying to make it work. Our relationship felt completely one-sided to me. You got all the benefit of all the work I did. I did the emotional work. I was the one that got a job and worked retail. I’ve never known anything to work except hard work and you don’t seem to be able to work hard. You stayed at home and I never really knew what you did. It seemed like you didn’t move at all. You seemed to be sitting in the same place from the time I left to the time I got home, and didn’t seem to have accomplished anything at all.