Why

“Why?”

After the long silence, one word is what I get. I didn’t see it coming. I’d gone to brush my teeth, and walked back in my room to find my mobile screen light had come on. I opened the message from my estranged former partner and stared at it.

“Why?”

What am I supposed to respond and say, if anything? What is he talking about? Why we broke up? There’s blame in that word, accusation. In a sense, “why did you destroy something that worked so well?” or “why me?”. He was a master of blame, looked for it everywhere around him but himself. I hated that. Is he really trying to blame me for everything?

Beneath the layer of accusation I can also read despair. I can see him now, on his sofa flicking through the channels on television as he usually would, not watching much, though now I suspect the volume would be turned up a little louder as he tries to scare away my ghost lying there next to him, hugging him from behind and falling asleep with my head against his. I know this is probably what he’s doing, I know because this is what I have done.

I’m not as sad about losing that relationship as I am heartbroken over what I’ve done to him. I love him still, I never will stop caring for him because I know him so well I can see past anything he says or does.

Yet this one word, staring me in the face, I can’t even reply to. Why.

A few possible responses run through my head. The one I began to text back was “You deserve a lot more than I can give you right now.” Corny, but true. I wasn’t ready to move in with him, throw in the towel so to speak and focus what little time I now have every day on just furthering a romantic relationship. This is obviously an item on my agenda, but it is one of many. Or maybe it was because I’ve betrayed him several times during the 3 years we’d spent together, and, finding that I could no longer maintain my own self-respect, I decided to run in the other direction. Or maybe it was because I felt so weak around him, used him as my moral compass, felt bad when he felt bad, and only happy if he felt happy; I’d lost control of myself and my own conviction, and I resented him for it. Maybe that’s “why”.

In the end, James, I really don’t know “why”. People’s paths cross, and some souls are closer together than others. Life without you is in many ways a living hell, but I’ve just begun to get back on my own feet, feel like my own self again. Maybe that’s overrated, but right now, even with all this doubt, it feels right.