Letter To An Ex-Girlfriend: Louise

The thrill is gone
The thrill is gone away
The thrill is gone baby
The thrill is gone away
You know you done me wrong baby
And you’ll be sor­ry some­day

BB King, The Thrill Is Gone

Our rela­tion­ship was a night­mare of ups and downs.

You had the amaz­ing abil­i­ty to make me feel good about myself, by say­ing the right thing with intel­li­gence and elo­quence.

Yet every time I felt like I was mak­ing progress, progress that took tremen­dous effort and ener­gy, progress for you, you would put me down. Every time I took a leap of faith and put myself out there, you would hurt me. It was­n’t even a case of bru­tal, tact­less hon­esty; you would insult my pride for no rea­son.

I think it betrayed a sub­con­scious inse­cu­ri­ty. Something you would do to make your­self feel bet­ter. Like your con­stant need to prove that you’re busy and mov­ing on. It’s as if your life is emp­ty, void, and you’re des­per­ate to fill it with some­thing.

I had to end things when you went too far.

There were no regrets, because I did my absolute best to make things work. Even though I suf­fered, I ignored the pain, and tried work­ing through it. I only gave up when you proved too stub­born to change or under­stand.

The rela­tion­ship was­n’t a total loss. It was an inter­est­ing intro­duc­tion to the sub­cul­ture. It was pas­sion­ate­ly sex­u­al. It also made me more con­fi­dent, although I real­ize now that it was­n’t because of you. You bare­ly gave me any trust, and every step for­ward I made, you pulled me back two. It was me who fought through all the inse­cu­ri­ties and rose to the occa­sion.

When you came back in January, with­out a word of apol­o­gy or men­tion of the wrong you did, I had no inter­est in con­tin­u­ing the rela­tion­ship. After that, I thought of you when­ev­er I heard the song Buried Myself Alive by The Used.

Then, with all your let­ters and your apolo­gies and your tears, two years lat­er, you asked “nicer than that”.

Unfortunately, it was at an unsta­ble time in my life, so I asked you to back off and wait. Your idea of back­ing off and wait­ing is leav­ing me creepy com­ments and dat­ing to fill the time. I just can’t under­stand how you keep mak­ing these mis­takes. It’s almost like you pur­pose­ly sab­o­tage your­self.

I don’t want to be involved in the dra­ma any­more. Nothing is ever sim­ple with you. Even though you say you’ve changed, it’s not worth the risk to me. You had your chance, and it was a damn good one.

You’ve wronged me too many times. The last time you left my house, not know­ing when or if you’d come back, I felt noth­ing.

I knew then that the thrill was gone.

A few oth­er things:

  • On the phone, your voice could be so cute that it would make me weak and for­get every­thing you did.
  • Out of all my girl­friends, you were phys­i­cal­ly the least attrac­tive, yet you were the most con­ceit­ed about your looks.
  • It was very much appre­ci­at­ed when you brought me flow­ers at work, and the times you’ve dropped off food and oth­er good­ies at my door. No one else has done this for me.
  • The way you would remem­ber events was often com­plete­ly wrong. It would­n’t be so bad if you weren’t com­plete­ly con­vinced that your inter­pre­ta­tion was cor­rect. It made things rather scary, like dat­ing a schiz­o­phrenic. You could total­ly fab­ri­cate how things went, the way you want­ed to remem­ber them. The root of an argu­ment would turn into my fault, instead of yours.
  • You were a knock­out in bed.

The Letter To An Ex-Girlfriend series

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

11 comments

  1. If she was just bad and cal­lous and sour across the board, there’d be no sweet hook. Life would be so easy if there were good and prop­er vil­lains. (Or maybe that should be evil and improp­er vil­lains.) Live and learn and take the learn­ing with us is the best we can hope for some­times.

  2. I used to be like that too. Believing the events as I want­ed them to hap­pen. The rea­son was still clear to me. Because I want­ed some­thing out of some­thing and I can’t have any­thing gone wary.

    Sometimes, believ­ing that some­thing will hap­pen the way you want and has hap­pened the way you want, facil­i­tates oth­ers to fol­low suit. Like walk­ing in to an par­ty com­plete­ly unin­vit­ed but act­ing as if you are the guest of the host. I always won­dered if this self reflec­tion and check­ing process will put a ham­per on lead­er­ship and con­fi­dence.

  3. @Pearl — You’re absolute­ly right about life being easy if it was a sim­ple case of bad across the board. I think that’s why I stuck it out for as long as I did.

    I remem­ber a poll once of the top 10 favourite movies, and all of them had very polar­ized “good” and “bad” sides. No com­plex char­ac­ters, just pure good or evil, like Star Wars. It’s eas­i­er to hate the vil­lian when they have no redeem­ing qual­i­ties.

    @Causalien — There’s a dif­fer­ence between being con­scious and being com­plete­ly unaware that you’re doing such a thing. I’d say in your case it’s more of “pre­tend­ing” (a con­scious thing) than “believ­ing” (sub­con­scious­ly). Those who pre­tend are mak­ing light of a bad sit­u­a­tion; I don’t think this would ham­per lead­er­ship or con­fi­dence. Those who believe are the ones who can’t accept the truth, hence the fab­ri­ca­tion.

  4. I like your (some­times bru­tal) hon­esty.

  5. Thanks Vi, this is one of the few places I feel com­fort­able speak­ing the truth.

  6. Allow me to joke for a sec­ond.

    A slight­ly less than attrac­tive girl named Louise would have to be a knock­out in bed.

    And allow my jok­ing to cease.

    Thank you.

  7. Ouch. i hope i nev­er date any­one who has a blog like this. your pen (or key­board rather) real­ly is might­i­er than the sword.

  8. Don’t hope you nev­er date any­one with a blog like mine. Hope you nev­er treat any­one so bad­ly, and you won’t have to wor­ry about such a thing.

  9. i sup­pose you have a point. i would nev­er treat any­one as such and i do enjoy your blog, its just that it would hurt me to read things like that writ­ten about me, espe­cial­ly on the inter­net for all to see. it reminds me of an ex who told every­one in this mutu­al club we were in that i was crazy, because at the time i was suf­fer­ing from gen­er­al­ized anx­i­ety /panic dis­or­der (which i know you can relate to). It’s true that i was a hand full at the time, but i was a good lov­ing girl­friend, and he made peo­ple think that i was hor­ri­ble before they could make the deci­sion for them­selves and lat­er on i found out that he had cheat­ed on me while we were dat­ing. it’s all sub­jec­tive i sup­pose and all’s fair in love and war.

  10. I don’t write to hurt peo­ple. I just write the truth, and some­times the truth hurts.

    I’d say that if peo­ple think you’re hor­ri­ble and crazy based on what some­one else says, they’re just as much at fault for being too sequa­cious to believe it with­out get­ting both sides of the sto­ry. People can (and should) make deci­sions for them­selves at any time, even after they’re giv­en infor­ma­tion. It does­n’t mat­ter if your ex made up lies about you and already told them. The bur­den of proof is on them to find out the truth. Unfortunately, most peo­ple don’t and sheep­ish­ly believe any­thing their told. Just remem­ber that a truth is worth a mil­lion words.

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