Last Love Song by ZZ Ward
Dear Adan,
Jesus, I have lost all comfort in my ability to be myself. I feel like a hermit crab now, naked and afraid in the open ocean, trying to get to a new shell since I feel myself suffocating in this one, but knowing that coming out of my current one will leave me open to whatever eats hermit crabs. Piranhas. Let's go with piranhas. Anyway, I feel like this is a step I need to take to start to walk towards whatever my true happiness is. Not to say you weren't true happiness, but I am currently doing a Scooby-Doo-style running through different doors and getting to the same place to get to where I'm trying to go. I guess at some point you have to look the bad guy in the eye and make the choice that you're gonna figure out how to trap him and expose him and save the failing business from the shady businessman who was doing weird shit to garner more money.
I haven't felt this comfortable talking in a while. I guess I can explain why I'm like this. Last September, my great-aunt died, and I had a mental break and was sentenced (that's a fun word. More like gently led to and left at) a mental hospital for a little bit. Ten days of learning boundaries and slowly reattaching to reality. Before that, I had been uncovering whatever weird sexual abuse I'd gone through that my brain had locked up in some mental Guantanamo Bay with my therapist. But then, they diagnosed me with bipolar disorder (or borderline personality disorder because everything's on a goddamn cyclical spectrum nowadays), and that has been the hardest diagnosis to face thus far.
I feel all the feelings currently, so let's slow it down and get deep. I have technically known that I am bipolar since fourth grade. This child, let's call him Amir since that was his name, specifically told me that I was bipolar because I did not like him and used him for candy and money. But what fourth grader can articulate their incapability of whatever "love" is supposed to feel like because of some internal pain they don't exactly understand? There is mental blindness when it comes to trauma, and apparently, I am Stevie fucking Wonder when it comes to this situation because I can feel there's something there, but I cannot see it, and trying to uncover it has been a labyrinth of awful gut feelings and obscurely strange memories.
We can start with what I do know. The person you met was me. I am, well was, comfortable in my own very unique skin. I like obscure references, making jokes, using GIFs, reading, writing... when I say you got about as much of me as anyone ever has, I mean it. You really were my first love, and I will always hold that close to me. But I also know that I have an unhealthy attachment style of needing someone desperately and not needing them at all. I know that what you did, leaving constantly for whatever reason it was that time, was, at the very least, extremely hurtful. Pretending you were gay so I would stop loving you hurt me. You hurt me with some of your actions, and those are actions that I have to forgive.
They're actions that I do forgive. I can still feel the vitriol for them when I remember you because I have never fully acknowledged that pain. I can't say you aren't important to me or that what you did even remotely takes away the love and joy and happiness I feel when I remember you, but it still happened. I really want you to know that you leaving seventeen months ago (yes, ya girl's been counting) hurt me badly. I mean, you basically told me that you were addicted to Valium, told me you were going to sleep and would talk to me later, and just never came back. If you're reading this, part of me wants to refer you to the Cardi B GIF "WHAT WAS THE REASON" but part of me just, is tired. I want to know that you're okay simply because you're important to me, and I love you. Not romantically, not anymore, but just simply as a person. You are such an amazing person and someone that I want to have nothing but the best in this world.
I hope you're alive. I remember having this dream of you standing on a blue-tinted white beach in all white, smiling at me about two and a half months after you left. It freaked me out since that's the typical death scene in every movie, but I guess I should've felt calm since it signified peace in some way. I'm running out of steam now, but the point is, I love you, dude. I want myself to have the same peace and joy that I wish for you, and I know that in order to do that, I have to say goodbye. So, listen to the song in the title and know that this is the last love letter I'll be sending you and that I don't expect you to come back. Thank you for being the example of what I wanted in a soulmate, and I hope that I've helped you in some way too. Adios, pendejo. [Use that Rosetta Stone you spent all that money for :P]