Life has a way of working everything out and to be honest I couldn't have asked for a better ending. Not the ending you are thinking of though. Our ending was terrible. I was angry, hurtful and immature. I sent text after text never once stopping to just regroup and find myself, or even stopping to really think them through. To be honest the whole thing is kind of a blur. I never even wrote about you until now, three years later. I just couldn't bring myself to even think about it, to even really accept that it was over. I honestly assumed your relationship with her would just end eventually and you would try and come back to me. Crazy right? Yeah, insane.

Here we are though, three years later and you are getting married next month. I think when I saw that, when I realized I was never getting the closure I deserved, I think that's when it hit me. I needed to go through every detail of our relationship, I needed to cry and vent and cry some more. I needed to grieve. Something I did not do properly when things ended three years ago. I cried a lot and angry texted you every time you came into my head, and one day I didn't do any of that anymore, I just pushed you out of my mind, I was numb to it. You were dead to me. A little harsh? Yeah. But that was what was easy for me.

Can we just be blatantly honest for a minute? You cheated on me. You were engaged to the woman you cheated on me with, within six months after we broke up. Correction you broke up with me. Not the point. Six months wasn't even as long as our entire relationship?! Yet you were already engaged to her. So truthfully even now as a mature successful young woman, that still doesn't make any sense to me. It still hurts me beyond belief. Even more so because I summoned up the courage to replay it all over in my head and to go through all our text messages and I realized I gave you not one, not two, but AT LEAST three chances to end our relationship.

"It's okay if you have lost feelings."

"You can end things between us."

"I can tell things are different."

At seventeen, I didn't have the courage to end it myself, I wasn't strong enough and I clearly didn't know my worth. However, I still recognized things were off and I gave you the opportunity to leave. You didn't. So, to be clear, I don't think it was unjustified for me to absolutely lose my shit when I found out you cheated. When I found out you were engaged soon after. The one thing I will never understand is giving a man the option to walk away and he doesn't. He stays, says I love you and STILL proceeds to cheat on you. I don't get that. So yeah, our ending was terrible, to say the least, but there are still two more endings to our story. Your ending, where you live happily ever after with your beautiful bride next month. And my ending, which you know nothing about. As much as I would like to keep it that way because it feels so good knowing that you know no part of my life. I think it will also feel pretty good knowing you know exactly what you gave up on. Here it is.

I am now twenty years old. Working full time in a line of work that I absolutely love. I live in a simple one bedroom house with a detached two car garage, on the end of a quiet dead end road in the middle of town. I live with my one-year-old Goldendoodle that I raised all on my own. Maybe that isn't impressive or anything but working full time and raising a puppy alone is seriously something to be proud of. I am now an officer in the fire department. Important to be noted that you are the only person to ever look at me and say, "some firefighter you must be." Because I wouldn't let you turn around on the interstate to pick up a hitchhiker. As if that was any indication of what kind of firefighter I was. I drive a brand new vehicle and I am also house hunting. Yes, myself alone at twenty years old is looking for a house to buy, maybe I will even build.

Myself alone. My favorite combination of two words. Because at seventeen when we had that terrible ending I never thought it was possible to build a life by myself. I thought I needed you or someone for that matter. To move in with, to raise a puppy with, to come home to after a long day of work, to buy a new vehicle or to build a house with. My ending, I fell in love with myself, with being alone. I am living life to my expectations and nobody else's. I will never again date someone just to say I am dating someone because I don't need another being to get through life. I can do this alone. I am doing this alone. Actually, I am kind of rocking at it alone. The greatest thing to ever come of our relationship was you ending it. Because I would be her right now. Had you never given up on me I'd be the one that moved in with you, that got married to you, and without even knowing it I would be miserable.

Thank you.

I say that with absolutely no sarcastic tone. Truly from the bottom of my heart, thank you for breaking me.