All the best

I hear you got married.

I actually found out a few days ago, but had to mull over my response before writing this. I'm still not positive what to say. Let me tell you a few things I do know for sure.

I am mad at you for being so selfish and hurting your mother. It did hurt her, you know. Maybe she didn't tell you. Probably she didn't tell you.

I always thought that if I had a major life event like, oh, moving across the country, getting married, having a baby...that I would tell you. You know why I would tell you directly? Because I wouldn't want you to hear it from anyone but me. It seems that you do not feel that obligation, and though it hurts me it seems it is something I have to live with.

At first I was really mad at you for marrying Anna from Canada when you had carried on with her before I was gone; when you had brought her into my apartment; when you had (bizarrely) kept our pictures side by side. I guess she got you over me in short order. I suppose that is good.

And now I am left with all my other thoughts. They vary from anger to bitterness to hurt to resignation, depending on when you ask me. I do wonder this, though: do you ever miss those two kids? The two who were so young and naive that they thought their love could and would overcome anything? The ones who wanted nothing more than to sit beside each other on the bus to Florida? Because that's who I think of when I think of you. I think of the shy, long-haired boy to whom I told all my secrets and for whom I saved the best of myself. I prefer to think of us that way than as two people who grew up and further apart.

I guess everyone has a first love. Someone whom they fall in love with with reckless abandonment because they have never been hurt and don't know any better. I know that I can never get that back again because time and years and pain have made me more cautious, more protective. I still like to think of myself as someone who can love freely and openly and without pretext, but there are places in me that I'm not even sure I have access to anymore. I want to give them to someone else again. I am working on it.

I have plenty of ridiculous, irrational thoughts, too. I wonder if you thought of me on your wedding day. I know that is selfish. I wonder on what points you compare she and I, and on which ones she wins and on which ones I do, if any. I wonder if you ever regret not spending some time alone to find yourself the way I did, or if you're happy you had her before you even lost me. I wonder if it feels strange to you that your family still considers me a part of them.

I guess it is natural to wonder these things about the person who consumed half of your life.

Though you love someone else, and though I love someone else, I imagine that I will never again in this life lay eyes on you, and that is a strange feeling. The face that was once more familiar to me than my own. I imagine it is something you have already successfully come to terms with.

I don't know what else I can tell you except for this: I hope you have found what you are looking for. I hope you are happy. I hope you don't dream about me anymore.