I keep rereading that message and every time I do, I end up feeling the same way. Frustrated. Not because he’s hurt. Not because he’s moving on. Not because this is supposedly the last text. I’m frustrated because it feels like we’re remembering two completely different versions of this relationships. When I read his message, it feels like he’s talking about a person I never was. A person who was supposed to eventually love him the way he loved me. A person who was supposed to wake up one day and realize he was everything she wanted. A person who was supposed to stop questioning things and just be all in. And I wasn’t that person.

I don’t know how many different ways I tried to say that. I said it in conversations. I said it when I tried to leave. I said it every time I was honest about where I stood. I wasn’t hiding it. I wasn’t playing games. I wasn’t making promises. I wasn’t telling him to wait for me. I was telling him exactly where I was, and somehow it still feels like he was waiting for a different answer.

It’s a little bothersome. Because I know he’s hurting. I know this wasn’t easy for him. I think that’s why i stayed as long as I did. Because I knew what it felt like to be on the other side of that. I knew what it felt like to want somebody more than they wanted you. I knew what it felt like to keep hoping for something that might never come. So every time I thought about ending it, I felt guilty. Because I knew what it would do to him.

But staying didn’t change anything. The feelings never grew into what they needed to be. I cared about him. I enjoyed being around him. I liked talking to him. I liked parts of what we had. But there was always something missing, and no matter how many chances I gave it, that never changed.

What’s unsettling, even at the very end, it still feels like he thinks the problem was that I didn’t become who he wanted me to be. When the truth is, I spent the entire relationship trying to show him exactly who I was. I wasn’t asking him to wait. I wasn’t asking him to fix me. I wasn’t asking him to change me. I was just being honest.

And I’m still sitting with that in a way I don’t really know how to explain. Because now I’m left feeling guilty for a relationship that I tried to be truthful about from the beginning, and he’s left grieving a version of me that never existed.