I found a letter...

I found an old letter last night. It both touched me and crushed me - simultaneously. Dug out from the ditches of my soul, long before my heart became tainted for the final time by a man who never meant me any harm. Isn't it strange how the ones who hurt us most do it with smiles on their faces - completely oblivious to the fact that they are doing any damage at all. Of course, they don't hurt us with the words they say, they do it with the words that they don't... They crush us with the affection they never showed, the phrases never uttered, and the gestures never made. They make us doubt our self worth, and question the validity of our own love: could it be real, could his be real, and do either of us deserve it anyway? I thought I had found the love of my life, only to have it gone 2 months later. It is this man that made me say "enough is enough, I give up" and he might have been the nicest, truest man I ever met. He understood me, and accepted my instability and impulsiveness as beauty instead of chaos. It was me, however, who couldn't accept his stability and mild mannerisms. I expected so much more from him... The letters speak of these beautiful plans and exchanging of hearts. The phrase "I'm not going anywhere" stares back at me from the paper with such an irony that I am forced to look away. "You might not be going anywhere, but I sure am..." It's almost as if I had been looking for a way out all along...

I still think of this situation, sometimes wondering if I had made the right choice back then. How is it that a person who will treat me with such respect and delicacy completely lacks the ability to speak to my soul? Why is it that the people who should mean most to us end up as the ones who we find the most disposable? My heart doesn't respond to reason, nor does it understand practicality. Instead it speaks fire - always seeking that spark to make it ignite. I understand the world in feeling more than I do in reason, and I respond accordingly. I can offer up no reasons for my actions other than "that's just not what I wanted." It's such a lame excuse to give to someone who literally traveled across the country just to be with me. All I can do is trust that the decisions I made were the best for me at the time. Maybe one day he could have been all I needed and more, had I been willing to wait. As fate would have it, however he ended up a mere signature scribbled down on a plain white sheet of paper in my scrapbook of lovers who I left along the way... And there he will remain...