To My Ex,

I write this with no sarcasm, despite my sarcastic personality... I want to tell you thank you. Truth be told, you were a good first boyfriend. When we first started dating you were sweet and kind, and I knew you weren't after me to get in my pants. I was a whole head taller than you, had a good 30 lbs on you, and I didn't have sex with you until we had dated for an entire year. You were with me for me. I don't regret having sex with you, please don't get me wrong. I don't even regret the last five months of our relationship; you were graduating, I was a junior. You wanted to spend time with your friends and didn't want your girlfriend to mess with "sacred bro-time" before graduation. That's cool. I still don't understand it now. And I probably never will. You are never going to leave town. Your friends aren't ever going to leave town. Why did it matter that you had this "sacred bro-time"? I understand hanging out with the guys a couple days a week or whatever, but I saw you once a week. If I was lucky. I wouldn't have cared, you know. I just wish you would've told me what you were doing every now and then. You quit talking to me; do you remember that? Yeah... You quit that... Suddenly the guys weren't nice to me anymore and if I wanted to see you I had to choose between seeing you with them or not seeing you at all. You quit defending me. Remember the first seven months of my junior year? One of the girls you considered to be your friend made my life a living hell. She tormented me. She almost hit me with her car and spread rumors and threw stuff at me in the halls. And instead of telling her to back off you pretended I was crazy and that I didn't know what I was talking about. I told you that it wasn't working out. And you said you'd change it. You never said when. Or how. You pinky-promised that you would change, you pulled the crying card with me. I believed you and I waited for months for this change to happen because love is patient. I lost 23.2 lbs in 3 months because I got so depressed. I quit talking to my family. I was obsessed with trying to get your attention now. What had once been sweet and innocent love was now an obsessive competition where I always finished last to your friends, your job, your truck, and drinking. And then I looked in the mirror one day and the person looking back sucked. She wasn't the person I wanted to be anymore. So I got on the phone and weirdly you answered. I was crying, and you said it'd be all alright. You'd be over in a minute. I told myself I was going to dump you. I said, "You will do it with dignity. You will smile. You will say good-bye. And you will never let this happen to you again." It was my fault that I put up with it for so long. My heart knew that if you couldn't treat me better that someone else would. And it's true. I regret not listening to my heart sooner. But then again, if I had listened to my heart sooner I wouldn't be with the man I'm going to marry. So today I write you this letter that I will never send, sincerely thanking you for inadvertently teaching me to think with my heart and not with my head. For teaching me that I will never, ever be that weak again. With love, Your Ex-Girlfriend