Dear Ex Role Model,

I'm sorry this is the way I have to tell you that you were someone I looked up to. I'm sorry I never gave you the happiness of knowing that you were someone that I, and many others, wanted to be like. What's the most upsetting is that, even though I never told you, I'm sure you knew that people were watching you, wanting to know what you did and how you handled things. And that's exactly what makes you not being my that person for me anymore so much more painful.

I won't go into detail about what you did, mostly because if you didn't know that I looked up to you in the past, I definitely don't want you to know now. Let's just say, I was totally blindsided. The person who I thought had it all together, always looked their best, an incredible academic record, leadership positions in multiple organizations, really, the perfect person, completely crumbled in front of me.

I'm not sure what snapped inside you to make you act the way you did, but I hope that thing never breaks again. Because of what you did, I started to question my place in the world we shared. I wondered if all the things you had taught me were well planned facades, or if you actually were as good as I used to think you were. Even if it is the latter, I could never look or listen to you the same way I used to.

I'm not sure if that's unfair, but I don't really care. The person I thought you were before would have never said or done the things you did. Looking back on our time together, there were signs that you weren't as pure and selfless as I thought you were.

Maybe I chose to ignore it because I needed someone to strive to be like, or maybe you were just really good at hiding who you really were. In the end it doesn't matter, your true colors were shown and they just can't be unseen.

As for me, I'm not sure where to go from here. You disappointed me in more ways than I thought possible. You made me question if I was as good of a person as I used to think, but most importantly, you made me question my judgment.

I've prided myself my entire life on being a good judge of character and how pure someone's intentions were, but you tricked me. Even after you shed your perfect mask, I defended you. I told anyone that would listen, "there's no way they did that, they would never do something like that", but I was wrong. You showed your true self one too many times, and I knew that it couldn't be a mistake.

The word that comes to mind when I realized what your true intentions were: heartbroken.

Watching you try to strew together an apology the next day, after seeing all the damage you had done, was almost embarrassing. I couldn't even look at you while you spoke. I looked around at the other people in the room and tried to garner a sense for what they were feeling, and all I saw were blank stares, the same look I'm sure I had.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I know I wanted to believe you. I wanted you to still be that person I so fondly looked up to, but it just wasn't the same anymore. The hurtful things you had said were still burned into my brain, coming right to the surface every time I saw you.

But the most confusing part of this whole thing wasn't the confusion, but how I was supposed to handle this. I wanted to talk it out with you, tell you exactly how you had disappointed me, but I also didn't want to tell you how much I used to admire you. I didn't want to give you that satisfaction, not after what happened. In a weird way, it kind of felt like a break-up. I was so used to asking your opinion on situations and for you advice on the most important aspects of my life, to not even wanting to say hello to you, it just felt unnatural.

What I've learned from this is to not put too much faith in people, at least not until they've proven themselves. I'm sure I'll find someone else to call a role model, someone who will really be as great and clear minded as I think they are. As for you, just because you are the person you are, I'm sure other people will look up to you the same way I did. I just hope you don't collapse in front of them like you did in front of me. And for anyone else, I hope you think about what you are doing before you do it. Because, chances are, there's someone looking up to you too.