Two weeks ago I had to basically send a Cease and Desist letter to my Ex via Facebook.

Not because She had been crazy stalking me or anything (that would have entailed a restraining order for sure) or to imply that she is the sort of person to do that either.  Though we have been in communication within the last year, I had to send it to her for my sanity.

The last five years since our break-up has been spent with me trying to put myself back together in a figurative and literal sense.  At the time of our break-up I was in the weeds with undiscovered Celiac Disease, I had just left my job of 10.5 years partly because my health was so poorly, my wonderful thick mane of hair had all fallen out, I was depressed, anemic, sick and an all around wreck.  Something had to give and the slight (though not really) abuses I was suffering at her hands were something I was sure I could live without.  And so I broke up with her.

It was painful for many reasons and I cried.  Alot.  I thought that I was foolish for breaking up with the person I thought was the love of my life.  I felt alone in the muck and mire of sickness.  I felt lost and cut loose, set adrift in the uncertainty of a life that I had made but that I didn’t want.  At the time I thought I was crying because I had been given love only to turn it away, though that was what I was looking for the most.

What I was really doing was grieving.  I was grieving of all things, the loss of mySelf over the subsequent years and how I had not been wise or strong enough to protect the small bit of self worth that I had left.  After my Mother died when I was 21, I dove in head first and tried to fill the gaping hole her death left open. And Me, my Self, had gotten swallowed completely in the process.

In an effort to shield myself, I sought refuge in a relationship only to lose myself (whomever that was) within that as well.  I didn’t know I had a right to stand up for myself, I didn’t know I had a right to assert and speak up for the things that were important to me.  I melted in to whatever agenda she set and allowed her to decide the tone, pace and parameters of our relationship.  And when I thought to speak up, I realized that I had given my voice away.  Along with my self respect.

To be sure, I am not demonizing her.  I am no victim, though I had felt like one at the time.  I realize now, what it was I had allowed then and what it was that got me to that point.  I won’t cower in front of what happened.  I am human and not so nice things can and do and have happened to me to.

It was her contacting me July last year that was the eventual catalyst for my Cease and Desist email early this year.  I found out that she was facing a serious health crisis and even after all that time and bad blood, my heart broke open for her.  I knew how difficult her life could be because of this health condition and I wept for her.  I wept also for myself because it would have been a bittersweet situation to have been partnered with her and to have seen her go through this.  I wouldn’t have left her but I realize that I would have ceased to exist completely in the presence of her current health condition.

I felt like a witch for feeling like this.  I wondered what type of person I was or had become that not even now, in her moment of need, was I able to open my arms to her.  But the fact of the matter was, those ‘slight’ abuses I had mentioned earlier?  Yeah, those puppies barked loud and clear when she called and tried to make amends.  We never, in the five years since our break-up, have been able to have The Talk.  There are some times when folks break-up that they have a post break-up talk, some time after they both have moved on, about what happened in their relationship.  I had needed that from her and it never happened.  Either because I was still too emotional and close to the situation or because she wasn’t sure of what needed to be said.

In any regard, that conversation never happened which left me with a lot of ways that I felt about things concerning her.  Which made her wanting to make amends now that she was scared, fall on deafened ears.  We were supposed to have been trying to have a friendship after that phone call but soon that fell apart and I was left in a growing quicksand pit of depression.  I was depressed about being glad that we weren’t together, sad that she was so sick, upset that she still didn’t think my time or myself important enough to maintain a friendship and angry that her few phone calls had landed me in this cess pool of murky emotions.

It took me weeks (and I am not exaggerating) plus the anger and subsequent heart to heart with my Best Friend, to get me out of that horrible, no good, terrible funk.  Only for my Ex to call me again at the beginning of this year.

You can guess what happened.  I found myself in a colorless, tasteless, horrible, terrible, no good funk.  Again.  My Bestie worried again for me and I assured her I would be fine.  But she knew better.  And she was right.  Why did I feel so depressed this time after that phone call?  Because… well, I have a video about it:

Yeah… That.

And to help myself get out of my funk and to put this relationship behind me permanently, I wrote her the following note:

I know that you’ve been going through a difficult time with your current condition. But I have to let you know that I was never good at being the stand-by girlfriend and I am not any better at being a stand-by friend.

You only call when you are at the brink of despair and being friends with someone, with me, doesn’t work like that. I wasn’t the woman that you wanted in your life and nothing over these past five years has changed that. I am still in a wheelchair, I am still disabled, I am still in Miami and I am still the person I’ve always been. Just a bit wiser and old enough to know that the only reason you didn’t want to be with me then is the reason that you are panicking now – you didn’t want to have to be a potential caretaker to a disabled girlfriend/wife and you are scared that someone will have to consider that when they partner with you now.

You making the comment that ‘Now I have this disease and who will want me.’ was a really cold and rude thing to say to me, even if that was how you were feeling when you called me. I had wondered the same thing when we met and I thought you might have been the answer to that question for me but then you wound up ‘having a change of heart’.

You left me feeling less than the woman I was when we first got together and it has taken me all these five years to get myself back, to shore up my confidence, to even consider dating again. It is ironic that now you are facing the same thing you left me with when we broke up.

You were mean after our break-up. You told me to cry you a river, build a bridge and get over it. How can anyone say that to the person they professed to love for nearly 2.5 years? You keep saying you are sorry now but there are just some things that cannot be forgotten. You were callous, condescending and indifferent. I’m not sure much has changed other than the fact that you now are facing something out of your control and bigger than yourself.

I don’t wish anything bad for you. In fact, I hope the right people come into your life and help you when and where you need help. I just can’t be that person for you. I cannot continue to allow you into my life when all that happens when you leave it is that I get sad/upset/angry. I’ve come too far and endured too much to allow you to have any more of me, even if it is ‘just being friends’ in the crazy way you know how.

I wish you well.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I really do hope that she will find the right people to be in her life and help her.

I hope too that I will finally be able to let go all the way and heal up completely from this.  Life is so much more than allowing people who are not good for you to rule your heart.

-S