Midnight Reflections

Happy 2nd of the month. We hereby conduct this post mortem.

A lot of people have asked me throughout my 3-year relationship break up the same question.

“How did it end?”

Nobody saw it coming. I’m not even sure if we did. I knew we would eventually. I just wasn’t sure if we would remain broken up. Truth to be told, I didn’t want to leave but it felt good being away. Overtime, my decision became firm. However, I still don’t know what answer to provide people with. I don’t know how it ended anymore.

What do I tell people?

What started off as something so small quickly grew into something insanely bigger. Massive. Do I tell people we grew apart? We fell out of love? He said if I left him he wouldn’t feel anything? He was so mean to me that I could no longer recognize who he was?

I can’t pretend like I understand. How did it end?

Do I tell them I was betrayed? Do I tell them the distance grew hard on us or that he grew hard for other women? Do I tell them I gave it my all, he gave me nothing at all then wondered why I left? Do I tell them we learned the right steps to different dances? Do I tell them we fell victim to interlopers glances? Do I tell them he is evil and demonic for what he has done? Do I tell them I wish I could say he wasn’t that bad?

“Guess who we saw at Griff’s”

It’s happening again.

“How did it end?”

Come one, come all. It’s happening again.

Do I tell them how he refused to set aside his pride and ego to fight for me? The woman he claimed was the love of his life? Do I tell them we tried but he confessed of the sins he committed when we were broken up? Do I tell them eight months after the breakup I found out he was cheating on me? Do I tell them of the horrors I found?

Do I tell them I found tit pics in his recently deleted eight months post-breakup?

Do I tell them these photos are proof he jerked off odorously to other random women?

Do I tell them that in his recently deleted were screenshots of Leah Kateb from Love Island USA’s tits? Do I tell them that in his recently deleted was a photo of a random girl’s tits?

Do I tell them that what I found gets even worse?

Do I tell them I found an Instagram screenshot of a girl we went to high school withs tits?

Do I tell them that among the many tit pics in his recently deleted were three screenshots of my big sister’s cleavage from her Instagram?

I have never felt such a grand betrayal by someone I considered as trustworthy as a brother.

But I still don’t know. How did it end?

I can’t pretend like I understand. How did it end?

I’m sick. I feel like I haven’t even fully processed the horrors hidden in his phone. I feel like there’s a whole different person that I know absolutely nothing about doing everything he can to torment me. I can’t get over the injustice of this. Even on my worst days, I didn’t deserve any of the hell he has brought me.

I don’t think that makes me a bad person. I deserve all the time in the world to let this sink in.

I still can’t believe it. It makes my body physically shake and I feel like vomiting. It is not that I miss him. I do not. I just don’t understand how any guy could do this to a woman. How could you claim to truly love someone then go behind their back and picture their sister? My sister? Seriously? My. Sister. My fucking sister?

Who the fuck was that guy? I don’t know who this guy is anymore. For real this time.

I don’t even want him back I just want to know what his goal was with me? Was rusting my sparkling 2025 summer the goal? What was he planning by begging for me to take him back? Why did he want me back if he was going to cheat behind my back the whole time? Why did he want me back if he was just going to thirst over other women? Was this a strange demonic method to get closer to my family?

Was I just some esoteric joke to him? Was he sent by someone who wanted me dead? What did he want with me? What did he want from me? What could I have possibly done for him to suddenly feel like he needed me? After jerking off to photos of my sister? I filled in the blanks for myself ’cause I know he will never provide me with the honorable truth himself. Or why else would he have those photos? There is no other possible fucking reason as to why. I know enough of him to know just how much he loved getting off. I know enough to know just how much he preferred his obsession for tits over ass.

I don’t need him to confirm why he had those screenshots of my sister’s Instagram, I already know. A greater woman stays cool but I howl like a wolf at the moon. I could stand on a cliffside screaming ‘give me a reason’ and his cowardly roar would still manage to echo over mine.

And I don’t miss what we had but could someone give a message to the smallest man who ever lived?

Did he plan this all along? Was it all, truly, a lie? Will this ever be declassified? Because I deserve answers. I’m a woman of many questions. I’m also a woman who has never received a single answer to any of my questions.

I’m not a bad person.

I didn’t deserve this at all.

Never in a million years would I deserve this.

Three years of my life down the fucking line. Three years I will never get back. Three years I can’t even look back fondly at. Three years I will now regret but I didn’t want to have to regret him or my time spent with him. Not because part of me still loves him, there is not a single inch that does but because I wanted the normal exes experience. We promised to never be enemies and now he is far worse than that to me. I wanted to be able to say ‘yeah, that happened. It was a lesson and I wish him the best.’ He has granted me a life sentence of never having that.

I am so angry.

I am tired of pretending as if I am not angry because of how unfair this is to me. The injustice of this is insane to me. I am angry.

It’s not fair. It’s not fair. It’s not fair. It’s not fair.

Who does this? Who does that? Why? Why would anybody ever do this to me? Will he ever confess why he did it?

I’d like to say the boy I fell for all those years ago would never do this to me. He would hang himself before even thinking about it. But I don’t know if that is true. I think this might’ve been him all along, in disguise, and I think that is so unfair to me. How could I have been so easily fooled? That is so mean. It is cruel.

Well nobody expects their boyfriend or ex-boyfriend to jerk off to photos of their big sister, so is it really my fault for being so blind?

While I remain sane he shit-talks me under the table. He sweeps what he has done under the rug and never mutters a single word about the trauma he has put me through. He plays Mr. Nice Guy.

Mr. Perfectly Fine.

Meanwhile I do what I can to move forward. To keep the balance and peace between us. He gives me no mercy as his dark eyes stare into my soul as he pleads not guilty. What a master manipulator. He could’ve told me 2+2=5 and he would’ve had me fooled. It’s sick.

I’ll never understand how someone I knew to be a sweet soul could now be that same person’s demise. Even after so much, I hate to hate him. I never wanted that life sentence. I never asked for any of this.

I meant every word I spoke to him of never wanting to hate him. So the question begs in the defense of my sweet honor, how could he do that to me so easily? How does he still do it? How does he go from telling me I was the absolute girl of his dreams to saying I was never enough? How could he go about his life sleeping peacefully as I go for runs confused?

I say I don’t care. I say that I’m fine. But I am so tired of pretending I don’t have every right to feel every single stage of grief right now. It was a three year fucking relationship for crying out loud. He wasn’t just someone to me. Not the way I was to him. It’s the exact same betrayal of a brother. He was a fucking brother to me in spite of our love. I know it takes strength to forgive but I’ll never get there for him. Finding photos of my sister is a new low that hell couldn’t reach. How could anybody do the things he did so easily?

I didn’t deserve that.

And even in our conjugated memorabilia’s death I had and have had nothing but kind words to say at the wake. As the amazing woman I am, I even granted him the closure of a eulogy. I’ve maintained my peace. I have remained silent. I have yet to share what he has done. I have been nothing but truthful and honest about the person he is. I have kept my composure. I kindly and maturely returned his belongings. I stay clear from his social media presence ’cause quite frankly, why would I care? I have yet to wish death upon him. I have yet to say I wish the absolute worst things on him. I have yet to say I wish they send him to the frontlines of the war.

I am a good god damn woman.

I am a good person.

I am an amazing ex-girlfriend.

He deserves prison for the crimes he has committed against my good name but he won’t get time.

Oftentimes I blame myself. I feel guilty. I feel like it is my fault and I should’ve caught this sooner. I feel terrible for my sister, my family, who also thought they knew the type of person he was. Nobody ever knew him. All along I thought I knew him best. Better than his army clique. I didn’t know the first thing about him. They did. They do. He has betrayed me many times but this is a deeper betrayal that not even a writer can articulate properly.

I know I am perfectly fine. I have family surrounding me at all times. I have good friends. They have all supported me as I process this confusion. I’ll just never understand. If I knew a genie I’d wish for him to set me free from the shackles of my first ever high school boyfriend. It’s not that I wish to erase him. He did teach me a good lesson. I just always wanted him to be the best version of himself. He destroyed himself and continues to do so by becoming a proud felon in my tortured heart. However, after endless disrespect and disgusting revelations, I wish for a genie to erase his existence from my memory forever.

I could write a thousand stories and millions of poems about my anger towards him but none of them would overpower the sadness and disappointment I feel regarding this betrayal.

I hate that I feel deeply. I can’t pretend that I am not confused. I refuse to show family that he has knocked the wind out of me but damn. All I see is his recently deleted anytime I somehow remember he exists. How can I crack jokes about something that is in no way funny? What he has done to me is not funny. How I feel towards him isn’t funny either, I find it disheartening. How could he be so mean to me when he has done so much in attempt to kill me and I still have yet to unlock such cruelty towards him?

I fell for his ‘woe is me’ and every single time I felt empathy for him he felt nothing for me. Every time I thought about him when I didn’t have to, wondering is he was okay during the relationship and the breakup, he was thinking of other women.

My own blood? My DNA? My sister?

And in plain sight he hid.

But he is what he did.

And I’ll forget him but I’ll never forgive the smallest man who ever lived.

-A