Hello again. It’s been a while. I understand if you’re upset; we have not been on good terms for a long time. I won’t blame you if you don’t read this. After so many years spent being ignored, you deserve a little payback.
If you’re still reading this, though—hello, and thank you, and I’m sorry. There’s so much more to be said, but those are the basics.
I saw you in passing the other day through the reflection on a window. In the split second before recognition struck, I had the fleeting thought, she’s cute. Then I realized it was you, and the words turned sour in my mind. Still, I wonder: if I had never recognized you then, would I have walked away believing you were beautiful? If our relationship had never overridden every other thought I might have had about you, would I have liked you? If we had never met before, if the first time I ever saw you was the glimpse I caught in passing in the window’s reflection, would I have ever thought to be so cruel to you?
The problem was never you; it was me. The only reason I ever hated you was because of who you were to me. There was nothing you could have done to make me love you. You could have changed yourself to resolve every one of my criticisms, and I still would have found a way to resent you.
I’m sorry. That cannot be easy to read. I understand if you stop now; there is no reason you should submit yourself to more pain on my account after I’ve already been the cause of so much of it.
You probably haven’t left, though. You never do. Perhaps if you ever had, I would have recognized how important you are to me. But so far, your loyalty has allowed me the privilege of ingratitude. You have never abandoned me through all these painful years, never once turned your back on me, never given up nor given in even when I begged you to do so.
I’m sorry I’m not as grateful for your devotion as I should be. I want to be the person you deserve so badly, to wake up every day thankful to have you in my life, to treat you as gently and sweetly as you want to be treated—but I am not there yet. I don’t know if I ever will be.
For you, though, I will not stop trying. I cannot promise to never hurt you again. I cannot promise to always be patient and understanding. I cannot promise to not hate you. But I promise that when I can, I will apologize. I will try to push past all the impulses I have to be cruel. I will try to recognize your beauty the way I might have had you been anyone else.
It’s not as much as you deserve, and even then, I will not always succeed. There is so much that I need to be sorry for, but very little that I can bring myself to regret.
So this is my apology, I suppose. I’m sorry that I find it so hard to love you. It is not because you are hard to love; it’s because I’ve convinced myself it’s wrong to do so.