A Thank You Letter to That One Ex (Journey In Grief: Ch 4- Acceptance)

Authors note: Welcome to Day 9 of 12 Days of Christmas!

This fourth article is part of a series of works cataloging my journey through grief-The anger, the loss, the sadness, the denial, bargaining and eventually, the acceptance and hope that comes with it. This one is about acceptance: finally getting to a place where there’s some semblance of moving on and incorporating the processed grief into your life. As you’ll see, the stages still blur together and there’s hints of denial and the depression. But the predominant feeling becomes hope for the future. Drop a comment and let me know what you think, and what parts you most identify with!

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No, I don’t hate you. No, I don’t take it all back. I know it might seem that way since we don’t talk, and since I blocked you all of a sudden. It’s just, I needed space. Still do. 

Apparently a couple hundred miles isn’t enough. I needed the extra gigabytes, too. 

I'm guessing you feel the same. But maybe you don’t. And I guess it doesn’t matter, it’s none of my business anymore. 

It’d be nice if there was a timeline, a date where I knew it wouldn’t still hurt so much sometimes. 

Maybe I’m not fully at acceptance yet. Or, maybe just a very thin layer of it. Sometimes I miss you, and sometimes I forget you or the moments we spent. Well, I guess not forget. But sometimes I go a day and realize I didn’t think of you. And that’s nice when that happens. I wish it’d happen more. Cause it would hurt less.

I know it will happen, eventually. I’ll fill my life with other things. The volume button on your memory will dim down a bit, and the volume of what’s in my life here and today will be louder and more relevant. I’ll move on. 

And I am moving on. Slowly. Reluctantly.

The unexpected impact of grief

I didn’t realize how much this would affect me. I guess I didn’t realize how much you meant to me. And maybe it wasn’t you, but maybe just what you represented in my life. This hope and healing and natural connection and giddyness and this weird, sister-best friend-lover kind of love. 

I hadn't felt that. And I'm thankful to you. I really am. For showing me that that is possible. 

Thank you for opening me up to realizing what it’s like to have someone really care about me in that way. And how terrifying and uncomfortable it can be for me at times, too. 

One of my teachers

Yes, you were a teacher for me. Showing me the parts of myself that are still hard to let be seen, and be loved. And the grief and sadness that comes up when I finally let those parts be cared for by someone else. When I realize how long they’ve been neglected. How much I didn’t get the love I needed, for so long. That kid in me. There were some mother wounds we each itched and healed. Well, for me. And even that’s hard—to consciously say Me and I instead of We and Us. 

I’m riding the waves. I don’t want to block out your memory in order to move past it. So instead, I wanted to send you this. Even though you’ll never get it. You know, there’s energy and astrophysics and vibrational astrological stuff. So I just wanted to put it out there in the universe. Probably more for me, than for you. 

Still hard to say goodbye

I can say thank you, but it’s hard to say goodbye. I don’t think I’m fully at acceptance of goodbye. It feels like the way the universe brought us together and all the net good that came from our relationship was so much more than we or any coincidence could have planned for. So part of me still holds onto a hope that one day we’ll be able to be friends. And If I'm honest with myself, no, I'm still not ready to let go of that idea.  

It feels like we’ve got to be, one day, right? Once all this pain settles and we can just embrace each other, but at a friend kind of distance? I don’t know. Maybe it’s more denial. 

But I do want to say goodbye, at least to the partnership we shared.  

Thank you for your rough edges

I guess most of all I want to thank you for being you. For not hiding. And for not giving up all those years ago. I’m grateful you’re still here. Not just for me, but for everyone whose life you touch, even in the smallest way. 

Thank you for not smoothing out your corners and rough edges. Yea, they’d poke and scratch me up every now and again, but with enough distance, from all these months apart, I’m grateful you’re you. The pokes challenged me in a new way, and at the end of the day, weren’t really a big deal. 

You embraced my edges, too. 

Geez, soooo much crying

Thanks for crying so much with me. And letting me cry. And let me hold space for you to cry. 

When you zoom out, it’s kinda funny to think that it’s entirely possible that our relationship involved more time crying together than anything else. But it was beautiful. It was healing. And it’s just all this stuff that’s been inside that needed to come out. Thank you for holding space for me with such love and tenderness. And gentleness. And softness. 

Damnit. Now I’m tearing up again. I’m at a restaurant writing this, you know. And I can’t help but remember how much you hated crying at inopportune times in public. And now here I am. 

How much we’d cackle at the irony. 

I don’t know if I can finish writing this here. I feel like I might break down. But I don't want to censor myself in what I have to say to you: 

I’ve never had someone be that loving and gentle and soft with me. And I didn’t realize how much I needed that. You opened me up to more of my feminine side.

Okay. I guess I’ll be the one balling my eyes out at Table 3. 

Healing those deeps wounds

I know you’re not the only one who can do that for me. I know you don’t hold the key to my healing some of those really deep, childhood wounds. But you started to point me in the way. And you started to show me what it could be like. And it taught me how I need to fight the urge to run away. 

Because it’s so foreign to feel that kind of love. It’s like the algorithm in my head and body doesn’t know how to compute it, so it starts to want to shut down and auto-power off for fear of this internal combustion.

But you gave me space. You held me. You listened. You gave me the silence and the space to mourn and grieve for that kid in me who just wanted to be loved and had absolutely no idea what that actually felt like. 

Thank you for showing me what that feels like. 

I know what to look for in my next partner. 

That feeling that almost makes me want to run away because the love is suspiciously free and genuine and healing and there must be something I’m missing that’s going to hurt me.

I promise I won't run away when I find it. 

Giving my wedding speech

I hope you'll still come to my wedding one day. We joked about you writing a speech for it. Because we knew we weren’t going to be together forever. And I still hope you will. Because of the depth in which you knew me, I still consider you an important person in my life, even if you’re no longer in it.

Oh fucking A. I think these servers are freaking out cause they don’t know what to do with me balling my eyes out. Do they leave me alone? Do they console me? Do they ask if I’m okay? Bring more napkins?

No, no. I’m fine. Maybe we need to normalize crying in public spaces.

Oh. But I didn’t tell you. Of all the restaurants I could be crying at, I happen to be at the restaurant I work at. 

So yeah, that’s something. 

I miss how we’d laugh and cackle at such absurdity for hours on end. 

I wish we had an AI thing to track all our Facetimes and Zooms and see what percentage of the time was laughing vs crying vs just staring at each other's faces. 

A season of healing

I know I still have the laughter in me. The giddyness. It’s just a season of healing right now. 

I do wish that you’re happy. But I can’t talk too much about that without breaking down again. 

I’m just grateful we got to share what we did. And I kind of can't wait for more years to go by so that just the important stuff is what remains: two friends who loved and love each other dearly. The biggest cheerleaders each of us has ever had. The space we could create between us where we could be gentle and kind with ourselves and each other. And also to laugh like teenage girls. I guess in the way we didn’t get to laugh when we were teenagers. Oh. My mind only just put those two together. 

To nurture each other's spirits the way we did. 

You were right

Oh man. I was really upset. I cleaned my shower tub a couple months ago, and I could have sworn I wrote an article about it because it made me think of you. How you’d say it’s best to just scrub it while you’re already taking a shower. And I did. And you were right. 

And I can’t find it. And it feels like it shouldn't hurt this much. 

I feel bad for whoever has to clean these snot ridden linen napkins. I’m sure the cleaning service people have seen it all, though. 

Right where I need to be, even if it’s hard

Wow. I just. I feel like I need to end this piece, land the plane. But it’s hard. It feels like a saying a goodbye that I'm still not ready for. 

Maybe just for today, the acceptance is just that you’ll always be a part of me. One that I’ll remember with gratitude and joy and a faith in the universe’s timing and way of making these things happen. Even after 15 years. 

So I trust that I’m right where I need to be. And you’re right where you need to be, too. 

And even though it’s hard, I’m grateful for our paths having crossed. And all the marks you left on me. 

I’ll hang up first this time.

Goodnight.