To the Tall Piano Player with Dark Eyes,

I suppose I should start with hello. It’s been about a year since last we spoke, hasn’t it? Of course, we didn’t really speak. Not for a while leading up to the day I finally clicked that little red X for the last time. You gave up on me long before I gave up on you. And it’s only now that I’m learning not to be ashamed.

It’s just that you were so easy to fall in love with. And maybe that’s not what it was, but it felt that way. These days, I chock it up to science. But when you sat at that piano and played that mellow-victorious-breakup song, and I heard your voice for the first time… well, I was sure I’d never been closer to God than in that moment. That’s who I thought sent you to me. God.

And maybe I wasn’t wrong. For I am a woman of faith, and I believe God places everyone in our lives. You and I just weren’t supposed to hop onto a white horse and gallop into the sunset, like the end of a fairytale I make fun of.

For a little while, you were around. You looked just like I dreamt you would. You were strapping and tall. I called you my Brown-Eyed Superman. Your hair was so thick and so dark that I never wanted to pull my hands away from it, and I could have gone insane if I’d stared at your lips for a second more. You had a smile that seemed to suggest a history—a compelling one, the kind you could open in the middle of the bookstore and finish in one sitting.

I never unraveled your history. I never made it past chapter one.

We met because I made you laugh. That’s my weakness; making handsome men laugh. I kept trying to do it, and for a little while, you laughed with me. But every laugh lost a little more of its power. When we first met, you would throw your head back and give me a throaty, honest chuckle. Toward the end, you’d give me a small and shapeless giggle, almost like you were laughing out of pity. I am sure that you were, but per our comic tradition, the joke is on you. Your pity, I do not need.

One day, you didn’t call me back. There were no warning signs. You never returned. I called you a few more times, but I was denied. And I didn’t know how to be okay for a long time. I had to watch your life unfold as you took the hands of different and beautiful women every night. I watched your online conversations and dissected them bit for bit, wondering what they could offer you that I couldn’t. I never found the answer, and I suppose that’s because it wasn’t mine to find.

I do not blame the other women for what happened. They are simply living their best lives, as most of us attempt. I blame you. You went silent and didn’t bother to cough up an explanation. I cannot blame that on another woman nor will I.

You might have noticed that I didn’t know how to be okay after you left. Ghosting, my therapist called it. I would go full days without eating more than a handful of peanuts and a bottle of water because I thought that if I was just a little smaller, you’d turn your head my way again. Eventually (and I hate to give you the satisfaction of knowing you had great power), I was found in my childhood bedroom, clutching a cold can of Coca-Cola to my chest and sobbing, “My heart is broken!”

A therapist seemed like the next logical move.

I saw her for a few months. She was a nice woman with a welcoming smile and a shiny diamond ring. I told her everything about you. How you were my Brown-Eyed Superman until the day you became the living ghost of him. How I had faith that we would be together even after you had ignored me for almost a year. She was the first person I looked at and asked in a voice so small and squeaky that I didn’t even recognize it as my own, “He’s never coming back, is he?”

I knew you weren’t. She didn’t have to answer, though she did. I cried for four weeks before I finally decided you must become a distant memory. So I turned you into one. I stopped checking up. You are only ink in old journals and some memories I dust off occasionally.

There was a time when I thought I needed you to survive. I was wrong. I don’t need anyone but me. I’m grateful for the support I have, including the wonderful man I met exactly one month after getting rid of you, but I am the only tool for my survival. And yeah, that was kind of a dick joke.

You must understand I don’t write this letter to make you feel guilty. I don’t expect you to feel that way because I suspect you had a grand old time crushing my heart in your fist. I write this for anyone else who thought they had love and then that love fled. You are not alone. It will hurt terribly, and you might even lie awake at night, heart racing, neck cold with nerves, wondering what you did wrong. Well, let me clear that up.

You did nothing wrong. When someone breaks your heart like this, it is never your fault. You are strong. You are important. Don’t forget that. I did, and it’s only now I’m remembering the truth. Grab onto that strength and don’t let it go.

Yours,

One of the Strong and Important