Dear Aada,

You said that you’d try to stay away from my web site, but not to contact you. Therefore, I feel safer writing letters to myself that have you as the audience in mind, because when I’m thinking about you I can stand to read me…. and if you are unsuccessful in staying away, you’ll know that my door is open even if yours is closed. I respect your privacy and will not reach out. You can just be a fan like everyone else, enjoying the occasional shoutout from afar as we move further away from each other. I don’t want to change your mind, just to welcome you home if you do want to reconnect. I never know what it is that will bring me to your mind, and you don’t, either. Barring being run over by the proverbial bus, life is long.

I’m not going to make a lifetime commitment to anger and defense. I know I did wrong and I am incredibly sorry. My mental health got the better of me and I exploded. Our demise can 100% be put on me and I will never blame you for a thing….. but there is context.

Our relationship took a very dark turn when I realized that I was isolated from everyone else in my life, and you played a role in it. The further I got from my other friends, the more I wrote about what was going on with us. I wasn’t going out enough to write about other experiences, other people.

I rebelled against an authority and a structure I needed, because I also needed on the ground friends and to return to a life of care and connection.

I isolated you from the beginning by telling you I had feelings for you- literally the stupidest thing I could have said- and just doubled down. I could die of mortification from that alone, but there are just so many options.

I wish I’d had some perspective back then…. not to overpromise and underdeliver. I think about it every day, compulsively, how I could have handled everything differently from the moment we met. It’s not to try and fix things with us. It’s so that I have more heuristics for a stable and healthy relationship with someone in the future. I didn’t just lose you in this whole deal. I lost Dana, too.

I tend to cry when I think of the four of us sitting on the back porch, coffee in hand; it’s the easy dream I made too difficult with my nonsense.

We both did this relationship wrong from soup to nuts.

I have come to realize that I wasn’t so much in love with you as I was in love with who I was when I was with you. No one made me feel brighter or more capable, and often funnier. I betrayed everything I have believed in because of your lie… but this is not blame. It was the trigger for a disproportionate response.

I can’t hope that you’ll forgive me, but I can hope that in time I will forgive myself. These past few months have not been easy, because my sins, in the words of The Book of Common Prayer, are “grievous unto me.” There is so much that I have done and left undone in a brilliant explosion of red mist rage.

Because that’s what I do- I pop off and regret online.

Not so in person. In person, I’m quiet until I see an opening to speak. I take in an entire environment so that I have more information to make a decision. All of that was cut off with you and I reacted too quickly, always.

For that, I am especially sorry.

I am learning the ways that I treat people online are different than in person, and I’m having to reconcile all of it. I’m not hiding behind any “I didn’t mean to…” bullshit, but it’s really true that half the things I said, I would have skipped or modified in person. Or the conversation would have gone completely differently because we could judge more than words at face value.

I would do whatever it takes for us to get healthy, but I know that is too much to ask right now. You’re still hurting, and so am I. My mirror neurons are screaming because I didn’t look at the consequences of my actions before I, well, acted.

All I was feeling was “stop the bus. I want to get off.”

Now that I’ve had time to come down from that much cortisol, I often feel deep sadness in my muscles. That same drive you have to save the world is also present in me. We reached out to each other in the right way, and then I proceeded to fail you over and over. It doesn’t leave me much time or energy to feel good about myself, lest you think I actually won some sort of prize.

That was the line that got me. I didn’t win a thing. I went into absolute meltdown. That’s not winning.

It’s this part of me that wishes you knew me on the ground. That your perception of me and my writing is off by a large margin. You don’t see me process, you don’t see me have to sleep it off. Writing is often a hurricane when you are trying to get your own emotions out.

This one is carrying Volvos…

Most of all, I’m sorry for not listening to you more closely and taking your feelings into consideration. My impulse control is unbelievable, and it had disastrous consequences for you. You loved me, anyway. Thank you.

You’ll always have pride of place in my heart even if we never speak again, because it was a joy to love you.

And I blew it.

These are the things I want to remember about our relationship- that it being all Internet was a bad choice and we just kept making it because I’d already made things awkward. Neither one of us could chill out for long. I’m sorry that things were volatile because you didn’t deserve my crap with your plate already so full.

I wish I didn’t miss you as much as I do, but it’s funny what you think you want when you see red mist rage.

Autistic meltdown and burnout ate my lunch because the red flash of rage was instantaneous. The “think it, say it” plan was in full force and you were caught in impossible crosshairs. That’s because I didn’t take time to breathe.

Had I taken a breath, I would have remembered who you are…. my pet dragon on a fraying leash.

But I didn’t. I am kicking myself for having the impulse control of a toddler, defiant and yet sobbing.

Self-soothing by writing it all out.

When I am in my right mind, I know that you are my person. Your words have assured me of that. I don’t know what to do when I am spinning out with anxiety and/or anger.

We’ve never talked about coping mechanisms or anything else I should have thought to ask you before being so thoughtless.

I’m laying my heart on the table because it doesn’t matter to me if you see it bleeding. It matters to me that I do five years down the road.

My sister just e-mailed me and we’re going to see Brené Brown for my birthday.

That makes me laugh, and cry.

I ruined everything for nothing…………………… so far.

It is only in this place that we can begin to look up.

I hope that forever doesn’t mean forever, because I am continuing to learn about myself and want to give you the relationship with me that you deserve. It also saddens me to throw away so much history.

But like every big disaster in my life, this one was preceded by “things that should have come to my attention yesterday.”

I wish we’d met in person.

Not because the feelings would have been more real. It’s that they would have slowed down enough for us both to really take them in.

I wonder all the time if this period of my life is supposed to be the right direction, whether I gave myself what I really wanted in a flash of anger or whether I will continue to mourn and regret like this. I think it depends on how quickly I readjust to being in a group. I tend to miss you less when I’m engaged in conversation with other people, because it’s compartmentalized.

The rest of the time, the compulsion to write things down so I don’t forget is mad. I did delete everything in my Gmail account, so the e-mails you’ve sent me that mean the absolute most are gone.

All I have left are my own words, and in a lot of ways, that’s best. I don’t go down the rabbit hole of reading our old e-mail, crying when I read something touching.

I’m going to miss your writing voice… strident, loving, kind, pragmatic…. a force against my basket of crazy.

I just know that we both could have made a difference in each other’s lives by looking into each other’s eyes after we trauma dumped and planned out next steps. I didn’t know what I needed, but you scared me. I take nothing away from the ways in which I scared you- I’m just saying that fear was a two-way street.

I should have prepared for my compartments leaking.

But I didn’t.

I should have looked at the face I was writing to a lot more often, to remind me that she’s the face I look to for love, and not to mess that up.

But I didn’t.

I should have behaved myself.

But I didn’t.

All I can do is be fallible and admit mistakes to myself, because those “didn’ts” are too many reasons why we shouldn’t reconnect. What I have to say for myself is that I will never stop growing and changing. I admit mistakes so that I don’t repeat them.

Which is why if we reconnect, it will be a high bar for us both. I don’t want to be your internet friend anymore, because I want to have real conversations that don’t isolate us from the rest of the world.

It’s almost an impossibility that you will forgive me, but I don’t want the next 12 years to be a repeat of the last. I think you will agree that it has been really fucking strange and exhausting.

I don’t want our relationship to be strange and exhausting. I want us to try and make each other feel safe. So much of my anger was directed at not feeling safe with you. So much of your anger is directed at not feeling safe with me. Yet we delight the hell out of each other when we’re not fighting.

I just know that I want a rich and full life with you in it, but I have done enough that you don’t feel the same about me.

I will miss sending you little surprises.

Happy birthday and Merry Christmas in perpetuity, I guess.

I want you to have the best life you can, even if I’m not in it.

Leslie

It’s a sobering realization that no one can change your life but you. There are memes and coffee mugs that all say it, but you really have to feel the “oh, shit” moment when you realize no one is coming.

It’s harder when you realize the village you would have had isn’t there anymore because you set it on fire.

Aada is on my mind this morning because I realized that in another entry I said that our relationship had become negative for me. I think I misspoke because it seemed like Aada was doing something that made the relationship negative. No, I didn’t like the behaviors I saw in myself. She never got the right version of me, and there was no way to correct first impressions.

Aada only got the internet version of me, and wouldn’t meet up to correct any misconceptions or let our relationship relax from its adrenaline-fueled origin story. I cannot make anyone do anything, so I retreated in a major way. I could not have handled it any worse had I hired a brass quintet to herald why I wanted out.

In short, she scared me. I scared her. Neither one of us were very good at communication because we didn’t grow up in the same first family environment and that’s not even counting the differences between meeting someone at Safeway and sliding into their DMs for 12 years.

She says she’s going to try and stay away from my blog. I support this, because my life needs to move on without her right now. But I hope that someday she remembers the depth and breadth of who I am and not hold me to my worst mistakes. I will do the same for her. I just don’t think that needs to be three months after our initial blowout. I picture some years passing, that maybe something will bring us back together because I know we’re mad at each other right now but this is too hilarious and I’m not going to think of anyone else.

And then I picture meeting in person shortly after, because I do not want to go any longer with Aada as the internet version of myself.

On the internet, I was brash and bold. I said too many things that should never have been said, and I regret them so much that thinking about it is painful. I know that I am not a narcissist, but I will always have played that role in Aada’s life. I couldn’t see the completed puzzle on the table when we met, and that’s the part where I struggle in my grief now.

Our most recent blowout is just that…. our most recent blowout. Where I get tripped up is why in the world our relationship descended into such madness 12 years ago. Why wasn’t I smart enough to see endgame?

And then there’s the old adage that one lie rips the fabric of a narcissist’s world, so I have to know whether Aada told me she lied because she needed to unburden herself, or whether she just told me she lied to watch me spin out (we’re very healthy, can’t you tell?).

But a narcissist wouldn’t wonder if they were a narcissist and they for damn sure wouldn’t be trying to figure out relationship patterns from years ago trying to figure out what they did so the next relationship isn’t like that.

I have a skewed view of all my relationships based on how Aada thinks of me. That her untrue version of me has affected my on the ground personality. That she thinks I do x, so it must be true when she’s never met me.

I’m trying to be the change agent that says “hold on.”

I wish I could go back to the days where I was happy with our arrangement, but I can’t. We’re both too old to be fighting like this, and it’s a shame we couldn’t get it together. There was just no third party to verify what either of us were saying.

I have to forgive myself because I was incredibly mentally ill. I did get myself checked out, but I didn’t ask the right questions….. like, “what do you really want to be doing when you’re 50?”

That’s easy.

Writing books with my coauthor, shooting a straw in her direction if I need her attention.

I could have taken that dream and run with it. But I didn’t. I traded it for Bipolar with psychotic features. Whenever a choice was presented to me, I picked the one that would pay off right now.

I am entering a new phase of life, where I need to think about how things are winding down. Impulse control has to get better, because I have less time for distractions. I don’t have time to chase everything that feels good.

I need to be able to assess what I want and fit everything into those goals, rather than goals coming up on the fly.

I burned everything to the ground this time around, and it’s time to see if I have the ability to plant crops in ash enriched earth.