To Roy - After All These Years and Lots of Therapy

Dear Roy,

After many years I have realized the truth:

I was the best person you probably ever were with and I was a good, good person. I also was young and immature, but I am not the sole factor in being a terrible person that entered your life to cause maximum pain and toxicity.

Let's look at what I have been living with for years:

I was never good enough for you.

Let's look at reality:

I was a good girlfriend. 

Your brother talked about me to your mother causing her immense dislike of me prior to her ever meeting me.

When I met your mother, it was in the car. She was in the front seat and i was in the back seat with you. Your brother was driving. You had picked me up from my apartment. She refused to talk to me and she never turned around to look at me.

Why? Why did she hate me so before she ever even laid eyes on me? This is a question for your brother and also, perhaps, for your mother.

You cheated on me which affected nearly every relationship I had afterward.

I do not remember what came first, you cheating on me or me cheating on you. Yes, we were young and we were inexperienced in having healthy relationships.

You had emotionally cheated on me with Maria, your friend that you dated long before you met me. You hung out with her while I lived in San Francisco, and you did a lot of things with her causing me undue strain and stress while I was trying to go to college.

There was no reason to hang out with her because you were lonely. The very fact that you had once dated her, that you got her pregnant and she had an abortion which you subsequently cried about in my arms was reason enough to cause deep jealously when I learned that you had been hanging out with her while I was going to school on the other side of the country.

Then, while I was in college in San Francisco, you slept with another girl, in the home in Milwaukee that we shared. When I came back home, you showed me exactly where you guys had sex... in the bedroom, in the hallway, in the shower. 

Also, while I was in San Francisco, I would paint t-shirts and send them to you to sell at the UWM union. You kept all that money. I can't remember why.

We both had a lot of growing up to do. 

So no more. No more. 

We went to the same church and you used to make a sign with your two fingers which represented the word CUNT. You'd call me a cunt without calling me a cunt outloud. Why? Because you and I were broken up and I was starting to date another guy. 

Then you met a girl named Maria (ironically). You Brought her in to church each Sunday. Week by week you began tooled her to look and dress like me. Her hair. Her clothes. Until she was my twin. 

I left the church and moved on. Met my husband. Got married. Was living with my husband when all of the sudden I saw you and Maria on a TV commercial for a local weather/news channel. You were holding a baby in your arms. 

And I lost it. 

For weeks I cried and cried. I missed you. I wanted you back and there was no way to have you back in my life -- both of us married and building a life with someone else. Your baby should have been MY baby I thought. And for 2 weeks straight, behind my husband's back, I sobbed. We had met the minister who married us, and he knew you. We were at Jazz in the Park and Rick brought you up. Roy is a doting father. He will not put that baby down. Again, it tore my heart to hear this. 

But time heals all wounds and I moved on. That had just been another step in the grieving process. I was reading 12-step recovery books to help me... and I healed that part of my past.

… 

Life went on and Matt and I bought a house and eventually had Oliver. As I would begin to tell my 12-step story, I realized this major relationship you and I had was not even included in my story. You were eventually erased from my life. I had nothing to say about us and I realized the love I felt was gone, it affected me less than other major life changes and the book about us was closed... erased... gone.

And now I’m free. I am a good woman and I know I was worthy of your love. You too were not mature and we both met at a time when neither of us were ready to have a solid relationship. My past got in the way. And I don't know why you were not ready, but your brother and mother were a big part of the reason.

I won't hold your thoughts of me, whether they still exist or not, as what defines me. 

The end. ;)