disclaimer: watch comet. it's on netflix.

I think that when I started this series, it wasn't really for the people I wrote about.

At the time I was a very disjointed person. Maybe it was because I was fully invested in being the best person I could be for everyone I knew. And when that didn't work and I made stupid mistakes and couldn't find equilibrium, I tried my hardest to be the person no one wanted. Because then nobody could say they didn't love me, or worse, say that they did and then act like they didn't.

My second favorite movie is Comet. (My first is Good Will Hunting.) I used to watch Comet over and over and think of everything I was missing. If I could wait it out... if I could just wait the hurt out, there would be a loud bombastic confession at the end of my fucking movie and then everything would be okay. And I mean, there was. There's been a series of them. They always end terribly, so I guess I'm missing the rom-drom standard of excellence. Whatever.

There's a part in the movie where Dell is about to propose to his girlfriend, Kimberly, but they get into a terrible argument and he flushes the ring down the toilet. And then later, at the end, where he tells Kimberly every intimate noisy thought he's had about her, he explains that he can't stop replaying that moment over and over in his head.

And I think the part where Kimberly says to Dell: "Don't make it a joke," because he's so hurt and desperate and he's crying but he still finds some terrible, perverse humor in the whole thing, in his own folly emotion - maybe that was my problem. Maybe I couldn't delineate sadness and humor. I mean, when my nephew died and I finally stopped screaming, I laughed, which devolved into more screaming. Maybe that's a necessity for me.

The last monologue in the movie - where Dell tells Kimberly he loves her and he doesn't think his life is real without that love - for all my overly dramatic stylings, that was my reality. A selfish fantasy where the boy comes back after being hurt and hurting over and over and he comes back one last time and he doesn't hurt quite the same.

I had to stop coming back to people. You must understand that.

And I did love you, not quite in that context, but there are quite a lot of moments that I run over. Adjust a little. Maybe if I hated you, maybe if I was reacting in all the ways that you'd predicted I'd react, this would be easier. I'm finding it very hard to react like you said I would, and I probably wouldn't be able to if I wanted to, and I'm not bitter, but I wish I wanted to be.

I wrote this for myself, once again. You don't want to hear that I don't hate you. You don't want to hear that I'm not bitter. It would interrupt the concrete reflection of myself you had been formulating for months upon months. I could, in theory, tell you this, but it would serve no purpose except to make it harder for you. It's not because I'm cowardly - in the past, it was. These apologies were a lexicon of words that could never leave my lips. But now I would gladly say it to you if it would make losing each other easier.

And it's not because I didn't care, and it's not out some false, petty desire to prove to you that I'm no longer that person who ruminated their way to depression, and it's not because you didn't hurt me. You did - the cynicism that I've been trying to repress since you met me is becoming increasingly impossible to ignore. I expect transience in all my relationships. I don't believe people when they say they're busy. I don't believe it when people say they love me. Someone told me that they weren't having a birthday party and I immediately thought they were lying to me to save me the pain of not being invited. Every person I love and lose teaches me to be more and more wary.

Before cynicism there was apathy, and before that there was hatred, and before that there was spite. I want to love new people with the breadth and awareness I loved the people before them, but I've been finding that difficult.

I don't know, yet, if losing people was ever worth the lessons I've learned doing it. If knowing the people I've known was ever worth the pain of learning how to un-know them.

You were always, quite certainly, worth it. From the first time we spoke, to the series of slip ups I made trying to express how much I wanted to be yours, to that last resounding "fuck you." After that, now. All of it. I loved you. I loved you because you made me want to be so much better than a boy in a fucking rom-drom movie. I loved you for your voice and your poems and the reciprocity we shared, and how I urged you to stop letting people hurt you, and how you let me see what true optimism was in the face of so much pain. I loved that. I'm still not an optimist, but I have my moments.

I loved you because you knew there was a person under that rage. And then when the rug was swept from my feet when you expressed to me in a sentence that I was only honest when I was angry, Jesus Christ, did that fucking send me back to earth. I was simplistic again. I was that person trying my hardest to be what no one wanted. Am I volatile? Is this volatility?

All I know is that I loved you very steadily. I can't say that of everyone. And that, no matter what you thought of yourself in relation to me, you were never an option. You were a necessity. And every time we almost got there, almost made "us" official, the moments before stark reality hit us both were my favorite moments. Even if I'd known this would happen, if I could, I'd go back and say yes to you. Maybe if you'd just responded in time. Maybe if I'd just said all this, and made it so hard for you to hang up that you just... didn't.

I don't resent you. You make me desperately sad at times, but for everything you said to me, for all your pettiness, for all your cowardice, for every time you said you couldn't resent me when by the end you so obviously did (for reasons I can't even really wrap my head around) - I feel nothing but gratefulness. It's definitely a paradox, but if I hadn't met you, if you hadn't changed me, had this situation happened with anyone else - I would have done everything you said. I would have made you some villain I had to conquer and I would have twisted you into a mistake.

I hope that when you eventually read this, you've healed. I hope I'm not a sad poem. I hope that you don't resent me, or regret us. I hope everything that was hard is okay now. Because:

I did love you. Very much. And you meant so much to me, and I am thankful for you. I know it's not something you want to hear. It almost doesn't make sense - but it doesn't have to look good on paper to matter.

And, so. I'm sorry that this happened to us. I'm truly, deeply sorry.