Letter To An Ex-Girlfriend: Jackie

Am I not your favourite gad­get, no more?
How come my lit­tle baby?
Am I not your favourite gad­get, no more now?
How come not any­more?

Since you bought me, I feel lone­ly
Since that day things are wrong
Could you not repair me, hon­ey
Is my war­ran­ty guar­an­teed gone

—Ellen ten Damme, Gadget

There was always some­thing about you.

Your voice. Your Joisey accent. Your hair style. Your always-on chok­er. Your pierc­ings (I was always a suck­er for brow rings and tongue studs). Your taste in music. Your off-the-wall per­son­al­i­ty.

It was all so excit­ing. Something I’d nev­er expe­ri­enced before.

But you were a total dra­ma queen too. You would get upset over the most ran­dom, innocu­ous things. I could nev­er tell if you tru­ly believed the ridicu­lous things you said, or whether you just said them for atten­tion. Either way, I hat­ed it.

You could also be as imma­ture as a teenag­er. I hat­ed how you would do things like leave in the mid­dle of a game and storm off to the oth­er room because you thought you would lose.

I put all my feel­ings aside for you. I would always let you have your way, but you’d nev­er even con­sid­er mine, and I hat­ed it.

Most of all, I hat­ed how you meant so much to me, while I meant so lit­tle to you.

Even though I knew it would­n’t last, even though I knew you were com­plete­ly wrong for me, like poi­son in the blood­stream, I could­n’t end it. Sometimes I still won­der if you ever think of me, or whether I was just anoth­er thing you used to occu­py your­self in the sum­mer, between boyfriends.

I’ve writ­ten more entries inspired by what hap­pened than by any­thing else. I don’t want to give our rela­tion­ship any sig­nif­i­cance, but the truth is that I can’t deny how impor­tant it was. What we had would­n’t even count as a rela­tion­ship, if it weren’t for how much it affect­ed me.

My pre­vi­ous rela­tion­ships were nev­er sat­is­fy­ing. It felt like I could nev­er fall in love or appre­ci­ate my girl­friends for who they were, and I always believed it was my fault. Then I fell in love with you, and it helped me learn that the fail­ures of the past weren’t any­one’s fault, and sim­ply the result of incom­pat­i­bil­i­ty. If it was­n’t for this real­iza­tion, the suf­fer­ing and the heart­break would­n’t have been worth it.

You were the only girl to ever break up with me. It was the short­est rela­tion­ship I’ve had by far, but for some rea­son, it was the longest for me to get over. My heart tells me you were spe­cial, but my head tells me you weren’t spe­cial at all.

You were only the one I could­n’t have.

The Letter To An Ex-Girlfriend series

  1. Introduction
  2. Ashley
  3. Michele
  4. Christie
  5. Jackie
  6. Louise
  7. Bronwen

8 comments

  1. Leave in the mid­dle of a game cause she thought she might lose? Something tells me it’s your head that’s right on this one, my friend. Never under­es­ti­mate the lure of out-of-reach. It total­ly skews the val­ue of every­thing.

  2. That makes per­fect sense to me now, but I assure you, at the time I was very con­fused and upset.

    As the say­ing goes, hind­sight is 20/20.

  3. ellen ten damme is a great singer/musician!

    good luck

  4. I agree…it’s not just her vocals that can be so crazy and unre­strained, it’s her great lyrics too.

  5. You know, you spelled my name wrong. :)
    How sur­re­al this whole thing is, I did­n’t com­ment on it the first time I read it because well that’s just awk­ward, but now that its buried in the archives and the annals of time, I will com­ment. Reading this kind of insight real­ly helps me out as an indi­vid­ual try­ing to learn & grow from mis­takes. This kind of look, from some­one else’s per­spec­tive is so hard to get. I appre­ci­ate the hon­esty, and regret the jerk­i­tude that I bestowed.

  6. A long time ago you told me very pre­cise­ly: Jacquelyn is too for­mal, Jacqui is too weird, Jacky is too dikey, and Jackie is just right. I’ll nev­er for­get that. ;)

    These let­ters were a way for me to have clo­sure in my rela­tion­ships. They’re things I’ve always want­ed to say and it felt good for me to be able to express myself. I nev­er meant for you to change or be affect­ed by this or even read this, but I think it shows that you’ve come a long way if you’re tak­ing it to heart.

  7. Jackie sounds a lit­tle bit like me.

    Only much younger, and hav­ing seen less of the world than I have (present­ly)…

  8. She prob­a­bly was, at the time. But the fact that you’re aware of it is a very sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence.

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