I held on too long. I kept trying long after the race was lost, we just couldn’t let go. It is this feeling like someone is holding your head underwater, while telling you that you can breathe, but you know you can’t.

I have been on this amazing  journey, but my ex-boyfriend just couldn’t let go. You see, he wanted to be friends. I am not friends with exes, not ever. I have nothing but admiration if  you can do that, I can’t. I told him, clearly, we are either together or strangers, and he couldn’t accept that. He accused me of being horrible for cutting someone out of my life that I had once claimed to love.

Well…

Bite me.

Those are my rules, I have them for a reason.

So we talked. For months, he sat on the fence and kept me moving to his puppet strings. Days with 17 hour discussions/ fights (God, I wish that was a typo). He made promises, only to break them in next breath. And I couldn’t walk away.

But even I had a line, and I told him months ago, that when he crossed that line with her, there was no ‘more’ for us.

He said he wouldn’t, he said he might, he said he will, he did.

He was using her to hurt me – who does that? I don’t like her, she is a horrible person, but she doesn’t deserve to be someone’s pawn.

There we stood, each of us, each saying to each other ‘if you do this thing, then I will do this thing to hurt you’. But then a funny thing happened – perspective.

And I started reading twitter – people were LIVING, having children, marrying, doing things, loving, grieving, succeeding, and just…living.

Perspective. Suddenly I saw them for what they were, and I was sad.

Two people who have never had anyone, whose lives have passed them by, no children to hug them tight, no loved ones to sleep next to, no career to try to succeed at….they had nothing. Except for this small world they had created for themselves on the internet. The only world they would ever live in, the only one were they mattered was entirely fake. It was a cesspool of loneliness and despair, and that was their kingdom.

They would never know real love or real life. I had both – and it was waiting for me.

I got up and walked in the other direction.

I am not unscathed. I have wounds I have to let heal, but I will be able to move on.

They never will.

He stole a computer from me and lied about a release for some work I had written, but I knew this small bit of power was all he had left. I let it go.

I let them go.

I have a new path ahead of me.