I’m writing this because I feel like I have so much to say, and I don’t know if there will ever be the right chance to say it. Part of me never wants to send this to you because I feel selfish in doing so. I don’t want to hurt you, even though some days I want you to hurt. I want you to feel something, or show some sort of emotion that makes me feel like maybe you’re still in there, even if you’ve already gone and moved on from me.

I wanted you to fight for us. I believed you that night, even though I left in tears. I was heartbroken as you motioned, “forever”, because it brought me back to where we began, when our love was so simple and easy, and it made me face just how far we had drifted. But you told me you were going to fight. That I needed to trust you. That you would be there waiting for me.

Instead I came home to my world falling apart. I got the confirmation about the strength that was inside of me as I laid in a Best Western in Taylor, realizing that if I didn’t drive back someone could die. I’m thankful for that, even if it forced me to go back to face that hell. I keep trying to remind myself of that strength now, because I don’t feel strong anymore.

I watched water run down your face because you couldn’t drink it. I listened you mouth off to a cop who just wanted everyone to be alright. I wrapped you in a towel after I showered you off as you sobbed. I walked you to bed and tucked you in. I listened to you say those horrible things that you don’t have to remember over and over again. You just wanted to find the gun. You wanted to never wake up again. I watched you leave in handcuffs, and then enter the hospital with vomit down your shirt. I sobbed as the cop retold everything you said during the drive, and begged you to be mine again until the doctors had me leave.

I got into your phone to delete the texts and voicemails I sent while angry, because I didn’t want you to hurt more. And then I found out that while I was begging you to talk to me, instead you had been talking to her. I’m sorry for the harsh words I said when I found out I had already been replaced. It felt like a sucker punch to realize that while my life feels empty and hopeless, yours is filled with the joy of a new relationship.

I don’t know who you are. I know maybe you think that you are your father. Maybe you think you can feel better with a drink in your hand, while you’re on medication to make it all just feel alright. Maybe she will make you happier than I did. I wasn’t the best wife. There were times when I don’t think I was even a good wife. Maybe if I was better, you’d still be better. I’m having a very hard time not blaming myself, even though everyone tells me I shouldn’t. I come home to an empty apartment and try to fill every second to forget that I’m alone, and will likely be alone for a very long time, if not for the rest of my life. I have to leave work events to sit in my office and cry, because I realize that setting up an NES in the middle of an 80’s concert with a projector is something I would have told you about. You would have laughed. But I don’t have that anymore. I watched the person I thought was my best friend fade away gradually and then all at once, and as you left bits of my identity went with you.

There are no words to bring this letter I won’t ever send to a close. I am alone. I will be alone. Maybe one day I will learn to embrace it and not let this overwhelming fear take me over. Right now, as I reflect on life and my first holiday without you, I just feel like I’ve lost. You get the house, the job I got you, the college degree I worked for, for you, and she gets to have all of that with you. I get nothing.

Maybe I deserve nothing. Perhaps it was my turn to lose.

I could just really use a win right now.