I came out not only intact, but more whole than I was. Yes, you wrecked me, but after the heartbreak, I came out the other side. It was in losing you that I became not just better, but the best person I can be. Once upon a time I believed I was a better person for having loved you, but now I know different. I am, for the most part, almost entirely myself again.
I was still healing, still putting the pieces of my life back together, but he was patient and he understood. It was hard at first to love him how I loved you. In one of my ventures abroad I met the man I’m going to marry in the spring. Along the way, I learned to love myself, and love others more deeply. And most importantly, what came with that was true love. Escape, my darling, that’s what you taught me. I wouldn’t know the freedom that comes with escape. Do you know what it feels like to smoke hash in Amsterdam? I do. I wouldn’t know what it’s like to be lost in Spain and look up and see the work of Gaudi staring back at me. I wouldn’t know what real Italian pizza tastes like while leaning against a building in Piazza del Duomo. Had it not been for you, I wouldn’t know what a sunset looks like from the steps of Sacré Cœur. I’m here to tell you that I’m not defeated. However, in the words of Ernest Hemingway, “A man can be destroyed, but not defeated.”
You wrecked havoc on my self worth you emotionally and mentally abused me in ways you’ll never understand. You not only broke my heart - you broke my spirit. There are only so many times your friends and family can pick up the pieces of something so doomed. And who could blame them? You brought out the best in me, but when you brought out the worst, it was a worst that now, almost two years later, I can’t even recognize as ever having been part of my personality. I lost friends because of you friends who couldn't deal. And like I fool, I allowed you back into my life. I went to San Francisco, I went to Paris, I went to Barcelona, I went to Florence, I went to Brussels, I went to Amsterdam, I went to Iceland I went anywhere I could afford just to avoid you.
You broke me, so I ran like hell to escape you. I had decided it was better to run away alone than walk the streets without you the streets of New York City were riddled with memories of you. When I returned, knowing that I’d have to live in this city without you, I ran to Paris, a city I’d never been. The first time I left New York City it was because of you. I was blinded I had heard love did that, but this was my first introduction to it. I was the woman with whom you had fun, saw concerts, took to dinner, took to brunch, took to snacks in between I was the first person you called, and yet I was the last to know. You told me that all the time so I couldn't forget. I was someone with whom you were just killing time as you waited for something else, someone better. You didn’t love me how I loved you you were incapable of it. Holidays together at my parents’ house made it seem more real than it was, but now I know better. We were attached at the hip, as someone from an older generation might say, and in you, I put far too much stock. Everyone who knew us thought of us as a duo, a couple, a twosome that couldn’t be separated. I never did the math until Natalie pointed out the obvious I should have known: “You were trapped within two leap years four years that don’t count.” However, for me, it counted far too much. When we finally said adieu it was February 2012. I first kissed you on February 29th, 2008. My friend Natalie once told me that what we had doesn’t count.
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