No Contact Rule

“Tell me it hurts,” you say.

It does, which is why I don’t trust myself to call you, ending up in yet another outburst of emotion, tears, and anger — wasting all of the progress we’ve made so far.

Love is a choice, and every single action that one makes reveals one’s subconscious priorities and current attitude towards the relationship. Whether you choose to turn inwards or outwards, whether you choose to give up on the discussion, whether you choose to continue hurting the other person for whatever you deem more important. Ugly thoughts have been clouding my mind. Feelings of betrayal choke me. Why, why didn’t you ever look at yourself and look at what you are doing with her, and realize that I got displaced in your heart? Why didn’t you stop to think about how every single time you protected and strengthened that relationship, that ours would correspondingly wither? Was I that disposable a girl? No, you can’t be greedy, no, you cannot choose two.

I spoke to her today and got a sensing of the complexity of your bond. Definitely, being accusatory and righteous were feelings rampant in the back of my mind, but I kept them chained. She didn’t apologize once. I had always wanted to lash at the both of you — your mindless cruelty that completely annihilated a sane person, the lengthened emotional trauma that killed me off over a long time. The destruction of my greatest trust in you; how you always got defensive and insisted that nothing was happening between you two when you were always more than friends. I want to scold you, I want to exclaim what a bitch she is, and cry my heart out because it’s no longer whole. But I do know that i’m more than that, and so are you.

It’s so easy for me to fall back into feeling victimized, that you destroyed my entire sense of confidence, self-worth, and capacity to love anyone that deeply any longer. But i’m better than that, and i’m better than stupid people who bully me. I want to lament — look, see how pathetic I once was, kept begging and insisting for couple shirts, presents, flowers, to be sent back home, to feel like I was being treasured and thought of — all of which never happened. I never even got a birthday present. And I haven’t compared either. But fuck man, it’s over for real. Everything has happened, and it has passed. I don’t know to what extent, but I think you loved her, or at least valued her to a huge extent that overrode my feelings for the past year. It’s okay. Maybe it’s not, but it’s a fact. You guys would probably be best friends if I weren’t in the equation, or maybe you wouldn’t, I don’t want to think about it because it hurts and right now I cannot stop feeling the pain.

But anyway, the point I want to make is, no – I will not call you and tell you that it hurts. No shit it does. We’ve made progress from this no-contact rule and I see no practical point in hurting us both again. We were both wrong, and both wrong for each other. It was a vicious cycle and my lack of understanding made you turn to her even more, exacerbating the situation. And she was always a factor. I don’t care if she’s someone who completely understands you, and whom your the most comfortable with — in future, please don’t let anyone go through this again. To ironically quote song lyrics, you really did make me realize my deepest fear.

Let’s be better people. We had good times, we had bad times, we have changed. For now, it’s time to heal. I don’t know if you will ever see this, but perhaps you will in the distant future when we have become better.