Dear Heart, I Hate You

Brandon: You always were selfish. I don’t know why I bothered. Forget that I sent these texts.

A year and a half ago, that message would have stung, even if it had been true. Today, it elicited absolutely no reaction from me. I didn’t care that he called me selfish. I didn’t care if he believed that I was. All I wanted was for Brandon to go back to wherever he came from and leave me the hell alone. I wanted him to stop texting, to stop calling, and to not want to see me.

And then it hit me—what if that was exactly how Cal felt about me?

Welcome, Bitterness

Jules

When I told Tami about Brandon texting me, she almost had a coronary on the phone. She was proud that I nipped the situation in the bud so easily, and that Brandon had literally gone away as quickly as he had tried to reappear.

When I asked her if I was too mean to him, she laughed and said that while she had always liked Brandon, she knew he wasn’t the right guy for me. Then she reminded me how lazy and unmotivated he was, and how if I ended up with someone like him, I’d be a miserable shrew by forty who spent her nights plotting ways to get away with her husband’s murder.

She was the best. Mostly because she was right and I didn’t want to go to jail.

After weeks of Cal-induced pain, I started to feel differently. I realized that my heart hurt a bit less than it had the day before. The disappointment of Cal being gone was no longer this crushing weight that lived inside my chest. I considered that progress.

And then I got pissed.

Really pissed.

Why the hell had I been chasing Cal? Sending him texts that he didn’t respond to? Pining over him like I had nothing else better going on in my life? Why was I the one doing all the reaching out when I wasn’t the one who left in the first place? And if I was doing all the running, then who the hell was running after me?

I shouldn’t have to chase after a guy to make him want me. And I shouldn’t have to remind or convince him that I was what he wanted. He should already know that, withou

t question. So why the hell was I treating this guy like he’d hung the moon, when he’d so clearly done anything but?

I really needed to get my head on board with what my heart clearly had already started to figure out. When was the last time my brain was the one left behind? Usually my heart was the last one to catch up, but not this time.

With a sharp intake of breath, I made a decision—there would be no more chasing after Cal Dumbass Donovan. My running shoes were off and tossed in the garbage where they belonged.

The once stabbing pain in my heart had lessened to more of a dull ache. It was still a constant presence, but it was much more tolerable than what I’d been experiencing. Originally I thought I was going to have to fill the hole in my heart with something else to get the hurt to stop, like binge-eating copious amounts of dark chocolate or Taco Bell nacho cheese.

Turned out that, thankfully, neither were required. Time had been the only remedy I needed. Even the lingering question of why he left lacked the emotion that was usually tied to it. I found myself almost not caring about the answer at this point.

Almost.

The indifference vanished quickly and was replaced by anger. I wallowed in my anger, relished it. It made all the hurt stop. Being mad was a relief, but I had to stop myself from grabbing my phone and texting him things like “Fuck you!” and “You’re a coward!” And by stop myself, I pretty much meant that at least once an hour I had to talk myself out of berating him via text message or e-mail.

Anger, how I loved you. Until I started feeling like a fool. He’d made a fool out of me and he probably enjoyed how stupid I was every time I’d sent him a text, all but begging him to reach out to me. I hated myself after each one I sent, but it was pure torture to not know what the hell had happened between us. I kept hoping he’d finally tell me something, give me anything to work with, some sort of logic to process.

But that never came.

So he gave my heart no choice. It had to get pissed to survive.

Opening up the message window in Facebook, I scrolled to our messages. The last one I sent him where I had been pathetic and fairly drunk still sat there unread. Unread, even after all this time.

I started typing, all my anger coming off my fingers like venom from a snake bite.

You’re a total prick face, you know that? I mean, WTF, Cal? Where the hell are you and why don’t you give at least ONE fuck about my feelings? How can you just disappear on me like this and NOT CARE AT ALL? I’ll never understand that. I don’t get it. How are you so okay when I’m nowhere near it? Did it all mean nothing to you? Because that’s the only thing that makes any kind of sense. Unless you’re just a complete fucking ass-face, which I haven’t ruled out yet. I hate you. Have I told you lately how much I hate you? Because I do. You suck. I hate you. I hate you. I fucking miss you. I hate that I miss you.

I stared at my words, my feelings typed out so disorderly like word vomit across the computer screen. I pressed the Backspace button, watching as each word vanished.

I’d never intended to send him another message he could ignore; it simply felt good to yell at him, to get my emotions out of me and into the open. Even though it felt like I was yelling into the wind, never to be acknowledged, I still needed to release the words.

It was in moments like these that I still couldn’t believe we would never, ever speak to each other again. It seemed so unfathomable to me that this had happened. My mind sometimes refused to wrap itself around it all, like the reality was just too much to comprehend.

Reaching for my phone, I typed out a text message.