Dearest W…

Dearest W,

When we met you blew me and what I thought I knew about men out of the water.  You seemed a dream come true.  Having been raised in faith and in church I had lost my faith over the years.  Life had been hard and full tribulations. Then there was you…we hadn’t met in person yet, but you were beautiful.  Your dating profile said single and looking for a long term relationship.  I couldn’t believe my luck as we connected.  I had never connected with someone in such a complete way without meeting them, or for that matter with meeting them.  You spoke with intimacy and grace.  Your words were elegant and poignant.  You spoke of the pain of losing your wife and never having had children.  You were so sensitive and full of life.  I gravitated towards you like you were the nectar or life.  You spoke of your emotions and feelings fully.  You voiced your feelings about losing your wife to cancer and the pain you felt.  You spoke of your loneliness and need for connection.  We connected like two lost souls who had finally found their way. I told my friends and family that God was working in my life, something I had never felt or said. My friends and family thought I had lost it.  I was going through ending a very painful engagement, and you held my hand and guided my decisions.  You said most men were dickheads.  It stuck out, because you never used curse words but were so convicted when it came to the man who had put me through hell for three years. You were protective of me and cared for me before we ever met.

It would be a full month before we would meet in person, but when we did it was like someone had lit fireworks within me, within you, within us! We seemed too good to be true.  You seemed like a character out of a novel.  We had an unreal time together and then we spent the night together naked.  That seemed to be the only way we could get close enough with our souls. You were a gentleman.  You were kind, caring, sensitive, funny, engaging, endearing and all consuming. You told me you loved me the first night met with ease and conviction.  I didn’t question how it could be so soon, because I felt it too. We seemed something out of a fairy tale.  After all I had been through in my past I was able to make peace with it, because it had brought me to you.  YOU were bigger than life.  You filled every ache, every crevice in my soul and in my heart.  I was ready to be yours until the end of time. You cut our first trip short because of work reasons.  I felt heartbroken for you to leave me. I knew something was askew. I would later find out it was to be with your wife on her birthday.

We didn’t see each other but twice in those early months.  You always had something going on, and both visits were cut short…I didn’t live there yet and you had to travel a lot.  I was in the process of moving to where you lived, not for you, that’s how we met to begin with, because I was contemplating moving there already.  Then with everything we had you seemed to put the brakes on.  I was so confused.  So terribly confused.  Something wasn’t right. It wasn’t adding up.  I started digging on the Internet one night when I couldn’t sleep.  Imagine my surprise when you had a different name, a wife, kids and didn’t live where you had said (the place I was moving to). A wife, who had supposedly died of cancer, children that weren’t suppose to exist, and living in a place you said you had left. I sat awake all night, trying to understand.  I found pictures of you and your happy family, I stared at them all night.  I matched facebook posts to texts to see what were lies and what were truths.

I got my children off to school the next morning and then sent you a text…”I know everything and we have to talk.” You called within 10 mins.  You told me you were unhappy, didn’t know why you did what you did…that you wanted to leave and meeting me had given you the resolve to do so.  I sat on it for days, weeks, a month. I remembered what I said about gifts from God.  They don’t always come wrapped in neat little packages.  We are all only human, and deserving of forgiveness.  I gave you that and believed that we were brought together for a reason.

I moved as planned even though you didn’t live here and over the next several months we got closer than we had been already.  It seemed that our souls connected on a level I didn’t even know possible. You asked where I wanted to get married.  You sent destination locations for a wedding and honeymoon.  We looked for housing.  We discussed adopting a child that would be ours.  We picked a wedding date.  You asked what kind of ring I wanted. I introduced you to my children, my family and friends…They knew your story and still fell in love with you, with us.  We saw each other often with a passion.  It was agony to be apart from one another.  I fell in love more and more.  We traded secrets, inside jokes…we spoke in twin language.  No one would have understood our conversations.  I planned for a life with you, for us, for our kids.  You were completely immersed in my world.  I never met your world. We loved hard and often.  It seemed for a moment that it was meant to be and blessed by God.  You completely consumed my world.

Then Autumn came and the things you said were going to do came and went.  Your conviction to do what is right and live a moral life with integrity got pushed to the sidelines with obligations and commitments that were outside of the framework of us. Your visits became fewer and far between.  You started to seem less convicted to a life with me. The conversations and promises we had fell to the wayside. You said, when I pushed you about your promises and commitments that we had made to each other, “Maybe we shouldn’t see each other anymore.”  I knew then that your decision to leave your marriage had altered. You made excuses that hadn’t been there before. I knew then that I wasn’t your priority.  The holidays came and went with very little interaction from you.  You dropped me quickly for the holiest of family times.  I knew it was time for me to wise up and start listening to your actions.  Your actions before said you were all in…they matched your words.  However, now your actions and your words don’t match up.  You no longer talk about a future with me.  You no longer feel the need to see me or be with me.  You don’t show concern for me or my well being. Somehow over the course of the last 3 months I have become the booty call.  You make me feel like the other woman.  I don’t want to be that.  I had no intention of being that.  Never, not in the beginning and not now.  However, my love for you remains, but so does my love for me.  I just can’t be your other woman.

My thoughts about you and about us has changed as I have realized my true place.  Not the place that was painted for me with words and pictures, but the place where I really am in your life.  A side dish.  A booty call.  A person who is expendable. For me, you were my everything and I would have moved mountains to make it work for us.  You were my soul mate.  You were the person who completed my sentences, who set my world on fire, who spoke to my heart and not to my ears, who heard my cries when I wasn’t crying, who heard me laugh when I wasn’t laughing…you saw me.  You saw the very depths of who I am.  I was naked and raw in front of you and bared my everything to you.  I let you see me my strengths and weaknesses.  I let you have and gave you everything that I am.  In the end…I was cast aside and used at your leisure.  I am your mistress.  Nothing more, nothing less.  You made me ugly.  You made us ugly.  That is how I see it now.  I don’t have those rose colored glasses on anymore.

I have to move forward without you…How?  I don’t know yet, but I must.  I can’t do this to me, my children, your wife, your children…I seem to be the only one concerned about all of our well being. I have to somehow find the strength to love who you were in my life.  I must make peace with it and move on.  I can appreciate the season you were in my life.  Remember the good times, feel blessed for what they were and carry on with my life.  There will always be a chapter in my life named W, but it is time to close it and open the next.  I am not done with the novel that is my life and want a full a relationship with someone who is present in my life. So, I love you W with my whole heart and soul, but I love me  and my children too! We deserve more.  We are worthy more.  So, with a heavy heart and a spark of hope for my future I tell you goodbye…I wish you well on your journey and I hope you fix your marriage and family before it is too late.  I apologize for any problems I caused known or unknown.  Most of all I wish you peace.  I wish us all peace.