This is goodbye.

If not completely, then at least to what we used to have.

That’s what you have made clear.

Yet I foolishly still hope that someday you’ll change your mind.

I can’t keep living my life like this.

I have spent more than seven months going in circles:

Trying to get you back, hoping you’ll change your mind,

Praying that you will and getting frustrated when my prayers aren’t answered,

Longing for the past, feeling that it was so much better than what my present has become.

It’s a cycle, like a washing machine:

Wash, rinse and repeat.

All that time, I could hold on to that hope

Because you never said never, because I didn’t want to move on.

Even when I was tired of the pain and wished I could move forward, I couldn’t.

The ghost of our past haunted me, and the hope for our possible future kept me hooked.

Hook, line and sinker.

Now, it appears, that hope is dead.

You finally said never.

It’s the complete opposite of what I want, what I’ve wanted for the past seven months.

But it does give me one thing I didn’t have before.

The possibility of closure.

Now, I have even less to hang my hopes on.

Maybe that’s what I’ve needed to break this cycle.

If this really is the end, maybe I can finally close this chapter and move on to a new one.

This is ridiculous.

In an article about saying goodbye, I can’t even bring myself to say that it’s actually over.

Because, in spite of everything, I still hope.

I’m such an idiot.

What can I say? I’m a sucker for pain.

This is goodbye.

I could sit here and write more about how painful that is.

But, instead, I’m going to take a different approach.

Thank you.

Thank you for showing me what it’s like to truly be loved by another person.

Thank you for showing me what it’s like to truly love someone.

Thank you for making me the happiest that I’ve ever been and the happiest I could be.

Thank you for all the memories, which now hurt so much because I love them so much.

Thank you for supporting me through what had been one of the most difficult periods of my life.

Thank you for giving me something to hope for, something to dream about.

Thank you for showing me what it’s like to be happy and to be loved,

Two things that I hadn’t experienced the way that I did with you.

Thank you for being the light of my life when I felt surrounded in darkness.

Thank you for making me feel whole when I felt so broken.

Thank you for making me smile every day despite the world around us.

Thank you for making someone that feared the future temporarily look forward to it.

Thank you for what are still the best two years of my life.

Thank you for loving me, and proving to me that someone could love me in spite of all of my flaws.

This is goodbye. There seems to be finality.

You don’t want me anymore and you said you never will.

I can’t force you to feel the way that I do. I can’t change your mind.

I can’t make you love me again.

I love you, and I never stopped.

I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to.

But if this is what you want, I have to let you go.

So, thank you.

Thank you for giving me something that was truly amazing.