“I want peace, I want to start anew. I want to love myself with the same intensity that I loved you.” – Joy

Above and Beyond

Fiction. Inspired by a true breakup recovery.

By Bry LeBerthon

This journal entry is inspired by true events. Some of the characters, names, businesses, incidents, and certain locations and events have been fictionalized for dramatic purposes. Any similarity to the name, character or history of any person is entirely coincidental and unintentional.

Trigger Warning: our program often motivates people to discuss their trauma. If you find yourself feeling overwhelmed, please, take a step back to address emotional flashbacks and trauma before continuing to push yourself. If you are experiencing a medical emergency, call 911 or the National Suicide Hotline at (1-800) 273-8255.

Someone recently told me that you said, in the last few days she had spoken to you, that you still missed me.
It’s crazy how heartbroken that made me feel.
After a year, over a year, and several days worth of ghosting, after everything that happened between us, I still wanted- longed- to reach out my hand to comfort you.
Isn’t that fucked?
I can’t tell if I’m having more trouble getting over how messed up that is or getting over you. I do, actually, think that I am over you. I’m just still reeling at how much I once missed you. How much you, so small and damaged yourself, always feeling so powerless, could have broken me so badly.
There was a time, almost a year ago now but still, that I really genuinely thought that I would die for you given the chance. I’m still not sure you even cared about me. I’m still not sure I even really loved you.
But damn did I love the idea of you. And you sure loved the idea of me, or screwing around with it at least.
She said that you told her that you missed me.
I can’t comprehend it.
If you missed me, why did you leave me? Why didn’t you reach out? At least respond?
I cant stand the fact I care. I ever cared. I can’t stand the fact that I don’t know.
We’re different, and yet the same.
I love you and hate you nearly as much as I both love and hate myself. The swirling and coiling feelings inside me make me feel disgusting, vulgar, and out of control, but I can’t deny that they’re there.
That’s the thing- I don’t understand it. How could you just deny your feelings?
Stifle them down, masquerade them as something else?
I am loyal and honest, perhaps to a fault. I am nearly incapable of speaking anything but the complete and utter painful brutal truth, at least as far as I see it. I love truly, and deeply, and open myself up to wounds.
I opened myself up to you.
And I thought, that maybe, that you did the same.
But there you are instead, you thousand faced beast, cowering in the corner, unable to stand for yourself and fight. You rush at me, mangle me, take me by complete surprise, and then run for it, make a mad dash to safety, to your haven that is free from burden and ultimately free of me.
I hate the fact that I can’t retreat. I hate the fact I can’t reach you.
Over and over again, I hate the fact that I still want to.
I love the fact that I am moving on.
Sometimes, I forget that you exist. I think about my life, and what I’ve wrestled with, and you are hardly even thrown in the equation. I think about love, and all that it means to me, and you aren’t even on my mind. She said that you told her that you missed me. Though it hurt, I no longer wished that you were mine.
But I am left with all this love. Heart and arm and bucketfuls of it, outpourings of misery turned passion that I once had for you.
I have taken some for myself.
The dedication I had for you, for your love, for making you see me as I am, for vulnerability, I have turned unto me. I realized, after that cold December night, that there might be just as much within me worth fighting for as there was in you. That I had dreams for me that weren’t us, whoever we were. That you simply weren’t the only being or thing that I loved. That you weren’t the only one that loved me.
And you still inspire poetry.
And it’s okay that you know that.
But maybe, for once, my poetry is inspired by someone else besides you.
So this is for her. And for me.
I want her to know that, though you are not gone, I am not broken.
I want myself to know that too.
And she is so beautiful, and radiant, and her heart and mind move a mile a minute, just like mine, and she loves so deeply, and so completely, and she will never think about anyone else again.
And she is so loved.
And I am too.