Alright, here's a lesson for you: if you end a romantic relationship, you cannot expect any other kind of relationship with that person to remain. You might hope for it but you cannot ever expect it. You made the conscious decision to end things with me knowing that. It's true that you don't have any right to be in my life but that's not because of your moral values; it's because people work that way.

See, there is something that you don't seem to grasp which I reiterate over and over. Let me point out the two things about that very clearly for you.

> " I'm sure if we were together in proximity from the beginning things would have worked out. "

First of all, how the hell is this supposed to make me feel better? Second of all, did you forget about the "Even if things don't work out between me and him, I could never go back to you knowing real love".
Great job downplaying the past year of my life. You do realize that this is equivalent to "I never loved you", right? All my feelings of the past year down the gutter because apparently your eyes are opened.

> " I lost hope for us long before I ended things. "

But you didn't break us up. No, you kept going with me for months knowing that I'm believing in us and you aren't. Instead of giving me the breakup I deserved, you let me hang on for months just to cut the rope at a later time. If you respected me, you would have saved months of my time. And to add insult to injury, you dropped me the moment someone new entered your life. He might not have been the leading cause but that makes no difference.
You know the worst part of all this? When I accepted that you were letting me go, I told you that I would talk to you less so I would stop getting hurt. 24 hours later you blew up my phone asking me to take you back, promising that I could come visit you in a few weeks and telling me that you would try things with me again.
Not only did you neglect my happiness throughout the past months, but when I did the sane thing for myself you literally went out of your way to rope me back in, promising me we could try only to dump me again a few days later. Do you have any idea how fucked up that is? You were so self-absorbed on creating your own happiness that you intentionally disrupted mine after I gave you what you wanted. Of all the petty things that have ever been said and done between us, this is the one that trumps everything. You were willing to crush my heart if it meant you could be happy.

I do not consider myself a victim. I am perfectly aware of how relationships work and that they end because unlike you, I have actually been on the receiving side of it. Multiple times. What is different between all those prior ones and this one is that I did not expect you to give up on me and most importantly: I did not expect you to toy with my feelings.

On the same note: I do not feel like I owned you. I do feel like I trusted you, and that trust has been violated immensely. Not because you broke up with me, not because you found someone else, but because you stayed with me. You stayed with me when you considered us over. And yes, maybe I should have realized that you were truly gone. But I didn't. And you were very aware of that fact. And instead of stepping up and doing your damn job as the person who breaks up, you decided to let me be. Do you know the things I could have done instead of laying awake at night, hoping you and I work out? While you were preparing for a life on your own, I was thinking about ways to get us closer together.

And now, when you have done all the damage you can possibly do to me - after you are finally rid of me and got yourself a "Jeroen 2.0: American Edition" - you claim you want "peace"? What the hell is this "peace" you're talking about?
When you end it with someone, you don't just sever the romantic artery in a nice and clean procedure. You are taking a chainsaw and hack away. The friendly artery is collateral damage; there's no way to tell how much that one is damaged this soon after the breakup. I would've thought your life-experienced boyfriend could at least guide you to this very, very basic knowledge of breakups.

See, when you say that you say you want "peace", I understand you. But the "peace" you are referring to is me being all chippy and friendly so you could say to yourself that this wasn't so bad and so you wouldn't have to think about how you treated someone you claimed to love. You could assume that you handled it fine.

And now here we are. You're over there, I'm over here, there's no chance for a romantic reconcilliation, I am not going to visit you while you have a boyfriend and soon our schedules will be in a way that we overlap for exactly 30 minutes every day. Even if I wanted you in my life, there would be no place for us. If I am stuck with something that I need to talk to someone about, I can't work with a 24-hour delay. If I want to tell someone about my day, I can't wait 12 hours for a response.
Truth is that you have no time for me, so expecting me to want to be in your life is plain brutal. What would you even talk to me about? We both know your boyfriend is the better listener who helps you steer in the right direction. We both know that you don't like to talk about trivial things with me. We both know that you don't like to talk about your jobs with me (Remember? I'm that racist egocentric douchebag). So how would you envision us? You being the priest in my confession booth whom I can talk to every day just so you know what I'm up to?

It doesn't work that way. I cannot demote the person that I devoted my heart to to being an slightly upgraded version of an automatic-response-bot.

And you're right, I was there for you everytime. Even when I didn't know what to do or when you threw shit at me, I was still there for you. Because I believed in the person that you were and I thought that you were good inside. But right now, I am in internal conflict about how I should feel about you. There is still a big part that loves you but my GOD, there is an increasingly big part that detests the way you treated me. Fun fact: it's a whole lot easier to look past those things when you don't feel betrayed.

And now, one and a half weeks after I needed to go my own way for a bit so I can try to get my life back on track after you derailed it, you still invade my life. YOU DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO INTRUDE. You broke up with me so that is where your right to initiate communication ceases to exist. And likewise you are well within your right to ignore any communication that comes from my side, but first breaking up and then contacting me? You need to ask your fucking new boyfriend how this works because you are clueless to how heartache feels.

I was happy tonight. I went on a one-on-one date with Kimberly and even though nothing is going to happen because she has a boyfriend, I had a lot of fun talking to her. She's really beautiful and interesting and I made a major step in my personal development by doing something like this. And when I left the place I looked at my phone, I see you and some sweet things you say and now I'm feeling like shit again. Even after you left me you can't allow me to feel better again.

I am not going to talk to you when I feel bad because you are the one that makes me feel bad. I am tired of sitting in this emotional spiral downhill. Indeed, I was always there for you. And I like to think I was always kind to you. And I most definitely have given my entire heart to you. But what good did it do to me? It brought you back in the world of the living and I will always be happy for that happening and I am really glad that your life is better now. But during all that you made the conscious decision to do it at my expense so now I'm torn. My heart wants you but my mind is blocking it. And my mind should be right.

I don't know if I will ever be able to forgive you. Again: not for the breakup or the replacement, but for the lack of respect you showed me by refusing to pull the plug when you settled it for yourself. Maybe you thought it romantic, to try to hold on anyway? It's not. It serves no purpose if your mind is made up other than making it easier for you and harder on me.

But hey, you managed to take over my mind for the past 2 hours again. And now I'll have a very fun night again. And you? You'll go on like you do every evening: you have a nice night with your boyfriend, perhaps complain a little about how bad you feel about the way I'm reacting but overall you're happy. You have someone to come home to, someone to confide in and your life is on its tracks. I'm happy it is, I really am. But even now you're neglecting my feelings. Sometimes the best thing to do is to do nothing at all.

I don't know how this will turn out, it is way too soon to tell. I'm talking to a few new people so maybe I'll be able to put you at the back of my mind soon. Maybe I'll face some resistance which will cause you to pop forward again. Bottom line is that I don't know yet where to place you in my life. Yes, there is a good chance that I will put it behind me and accept the friendship you offer me. But everything is way too fresh right now to guarantee you that. I want new people in my life to verify that I am not delusional about all this. I want new people so I can feel loved again. I want new people so I can give my heart someone to look at again.

Despite all this, I still love you. I hate that it's true, but I do. But I cannot have you pop up in my life every now and then announcing your friendship is still good to go. That doesn't help me, Christine, because right now only two things can: you being with me or me being with someone else. I cannot be with someone else when my heart is with you. I need to carve you out of it but I can't do that when it's still active because we're friends. I need to hate you so I can love you as a friend again.

You can respond to this email if you want, but once this short chain is done you should really only contact me if either things end with your boyfriend, if you revise your view on loving me or if you are in a situation where you feel like you need to talk to someone.

I have only rarely be able to give you advice and I really wish that I could have been more effective in that department. It's just pretty ironic that we end like this.
Maybe I'm not as world-shy as you thought me.

If you ever bundle this 2061 words essay into a book about the greatest literary works, I'd like to be referred to as 'Big Long Johnson'.