A Letter I Can't Send Because I'm Blocked Everywhere

Dear ex,

I understand that I can’t send this directly to you because you blocked me completely after I sent your printed obituary to your poor-poor parents in Nebraska. So, that is why I decided to play mailman, by sending it to your new girl and hoping she passes it on to you with a hint of awkwardness.

Well, I walk down your street with precise caution now. Just hoping that I won’t find your face in the crowd. What then would I say or do? Would I smile or grin? apologize or greet?

‘Oh, good afternoon…I - I am so sorry, I never thought I’d see you here!’

My god, even I know that sounds crazy. But then what if you’re with her? I know. I would probably make a very silly joke, and maybe – hopefully, only I wouldn’t laugh at my joke. Maybe you and that silly girl could just make it less awkward by laughing too.

But then, how should I be okay with any of this? She literally stole you from me using a breakfast sandwich. How cheap can you be? If you’d told me that you were that cheap, I wouldn’t have gone over and beyond for that silly birthday of yours. I would’ve just gotten you a sandwich instead. I know you’d like that. Unleavened bread? Tomato? Cooked eggs? Tofu? with bacon and Worcestershire sauce? All it took for you to throw away a four-year relationship!

I can still remember the time you came back home one night smelling of her. You looked at me dead in the eye, my love, and you said to me, ‘It’s not me, baby, it’s you… oh sorry that can’t be right’ you said.

‘Oh yeah… it’s not you baby it’s me.’ You finally got your rehearsed line right.

Who breaks off with someone using a cliché line? You gave and gave, until there was nothing more to give. What did you give me? Anxiety and OCD. That’s what I took away from a four-year relationship.

You had me sitting down for most of those four years in the middle of the night each day drafting long apology messages. What exactly was I apologizing for? Maybe for breathing… it has got to be it. Every day, there was always something new that I’d have to apologize for. I ran out of words my love. I do wish you both well. I know I can’t directly tell you this after the obituary incident. You said you’d never forgive. But then why would I want to be forgiven for a sin that I didn’t seek forgiveness to?

I’ve always prayed good things for you. Oh, like yesterday when I prayed that you found a girl who made better sandwiches than her? That was a very thoughtful prayer. If I were you, I would pray it aloud every day in that house. Under those neon lights and carefully curated art pieces that adorned your ceiling from every art gallery that I could find! What didn’t I do for you, you fool? You never let me part with my stuff. You told me that you didn’t ask me to decorate your ceiling. You told me to start loving myself - but then what has loving myself got to do with my carefully handpicked art on your ceiling? I just needed my art back. You told me it’d be crazy to take it. It’s also the same way you told me how it’d be crazy if I left you during the first two years of our relationship. I am not admitting that I am crazy now, but I just wished I had left earlier.

Maybe if I passed by you and that silly girl on the street, I wouldn’t give off that awful grin. I had showed off my thirty-two teeth. I still wonder if that grin was done due to deception or over stimulation. Then I wouldn’t be a topic for discussion on y’all’s dinner table.

‘I think she has been faring terribly ever since you dumped her. I mean, did you see that very awkward grin she gave today?’ She might have said.

‘I know, I mean I am definitely what every girl desires in a man but not so much for her to lose her sanity over.’ Your narcissistic self would brag.

Then she probably smiled, a very silly smile, wondering what a saint she had met. Thinking about it now is making my skin crawl. I still have my printer. I wonder who I’d print and send your obituary to next.

You are as devious as they come, as cunning as I can remember. What didn’t you do to me? Like that time that you invited me to your grandma’s funeral. You told me that it was an all-white event because it signified upliftment. Until I showed up in that foot length white dress and found everyone else wearing black.

There I was, awkwardly standing in their midst…Not like an angel amidst sinners but as a demon masked as a saint. All those old folks just stared at me wondered: doesn’t she have any regard for the dead? It was the first time I ever met your parents – your family. You told me it was humorous, and I should cheer up. Why didn’t you wear white too if it was supposed to be humorous? Thinking of it now, I wonder who in Nebraska themes a burial, upliftment.

And I can’t tell what you’ve done to me to anyone else. They’d think I am such a fool. Like one of those silly nights when you made my day, and I told you how you made me happy. I can still remember your exact reply to me: ‘Yeah baby, big deal.’

I had smiled at this off-putting statement. You know I translated it to mean that making me happy was just effortless for you because of how much you’re so into me and loving me was your priority.  I translated it to mean a sarcastic and subtle way of saying; it is what I am supposed to do as your boyfriend, don’t you ever mention.’

But looking back now, the only explanation for it was how I had such low expectations that anything you did would make me happy. You knew this and you preyed on it. You called yourself an alpha male, a dragon, a lion. My love, you were just a jackal. An annoying predator in the jungle. Even a hyena would take offense. Who told you that you were a lion? You even had the effrontery to include dragon on that list.

The only thing you breathe fire on was my personality. I loved you like it was chaos, amidst every red flag because I just couldn’t be brave enough to face the world. Minute after minute of explanations. We almost never had any fights. What people termed as fights, for me was just explanation. Everyday you’d make me explain.

‘Why did you make me spaghetti instead of macaroni?’

‘Why did you turn on the AC for too long?’

Oh baby…it was the heat, I just felt really hot – I had explained.

Then you asked me where? What did you mean by where??? You told me that you couldn’t see this ‘hotness’ of mine.

I had cluelessly explained to you that the ‘hotness’ couldn’t be seen but felt with that innocent smile on my face.

‘Of course, a person’s beauty is always in the heart, it’s how I’ve been consoling myself for the past several years,’ you said.

And then you left me there, not understanding what you meant. I was just ignorantly wondering what had connected AC, and heat - to heart, and beauty.

I was delusional. You did things to me and made me believe I deserved it.

You had me up on every astrology site searching up: ‘Ways to please a taurus man.’ You are such an insatiable man. You’ve never deserved to be pleased.

I hope that your new girlfriend hates organic food. I wish she’d hate drawers too. Hopefully discard those damn cufflinks of yours you love to arrange immaculately in that scented drawer. What is your problem with those cufflinks anyway?

I remember when you came back one day and found that one of your carefully arranged cufflinks was gone. You made me explain where they had gone to. We searched for that cufflink, my god. Under the bed, by the drawers and even up in the attic. Why would you even think they’d be in the attic? I asked you. There was this maniacal look that you gave me, as if saying with those wicked eyes: you may have kept it there. What exactly were you implying?

I should have known something was wrong with you when I spoke about you to your parents, and they immediately changed the subject. I should’ve known. I bet they pitied me.

I saw it in your mother’s eyes when she asked me to go fetch the salad and I should please let the cooked egg remain in the fridge until it is time to serve it. She said you like your cooked egg in your salad very cold. As cold as your heart, my love. But that’s if you ever had one.

In the sandwich your new girl gave you, was the cooked egg in it as cold as you’d like.

I dropped off your laundry twice a week in that laundry house. I’d make them separate the khaki shorts from the well-tailored pants just as you liked it. If they complained, or felt too reluctant to do it, then I’d just do it myself. Those people there pitied me. I was just a twenty-one-year-old girl with so much burden than I could probably fathom. And then you had the guts to call me egocentric?

When I asked you why you liked the khakis to be separated from the tailored pants for laundry, you had just reluctantly told me that ‘it is something it did to the air.’ What does that even mean?

I was being punished. I was being punished for loving you. You were punishing me for a crime that I knew nothing of. But why should I say I know nothing of? I was guilty. I was definitely guilty of loving you, and I had to be punished because of it. Why me? what did I do to deserve you? I never helped an old woman cross the street and left her there halfway. I never threw out food while beggars watched me. If tripping bratty kids in the playground was a punishment, then maybe it is what I got punished for?

I know this sounds petty, but you made the neighbors hate me! One time you got angry at me and continuously punched the wall. You said it was a one-time thing and that you were sorry. I should’ve known something was wrong when you came out of the bathroom the next morning having rubbed my pink blush around your eyes. And when I asked you why? You reluctantly told me that it was for a prank.

That morning, you didn’t go straight to work. You walked around the apartment telling the neighbors who cared to know about your pink eye story that I had punched you in the face after a heated argument. How? I literally weigh 120 pounds, and I am 5’2.

You told them that you were an advocate for men’s mental health, and how you’ve helped several men, yet people cannot see how deeply you were drowning. It is embarrassing to admit, you said to them, and that’s why it is so hard for you to speak up. They pitied you. They collaborated with your sorry story on how they heard some sound from the apartment, why didn’t you scream out? They asked you. You told them that it’d be embarrassing for you to do so. Everyone gave me a side eye and I didn’t even know what the heck I did. Madam Stewart stopped allowing me to play with her dog pum-pum, and I really did like that jolly little fella. My only question is why? Why would you do that? Just why?