The Goodbye Letter

We've all been there -- heartbroken from the termination of a relationship. Of course, the heartbreak felt from the termination of a BPD relationship is just a little more -- maybe a lot more -- traumatic. Combine this with all the other life events occuring -- changing jobs, moving, etc., and you've got a Perfect Storm.

So, we finally broke up in December, 2007. She stormed away, telling her that she'll never trust me, and I didn't follow her. I didn't really contact her. I read a number of books, namely one titled, Surviving the Loss of a Loved One/When Your Relationship Ends. Pretty basic, but good overall.

I was such an incredible sap when the relationship first was over. I cried all the time, was so lost...it was pathetic. Looking back, I can't believe it, but when you're so broken, you're broken. No excuses.

Anyway, the book recommended that I write a goodbye letter, recapping the good aspects of the relationship as well as the bad ones. They tell you that you don't have to necessarily give it to the person, but it's more a form of self-medication.

As I think you can see, I'm a writer. A professional writer also. I write when I'm happy, I write when I'm sad. I just...write all the time. It's how I express myself.

Of course I would write a letter. So I sat down, pulled out a pen and paper, and wrote the letter. I wrote goodbye to all the good things -- the fun times, the good things about her. Then I wrote goodbye to all the bad things, including her misery. It was good -- real good. I felt good about the letter.

The purpose of the goodbye letter is to mourn the relationship and help you put the relationship away. I wrote it in January, and did all the work that I was supposed to -- read the books, went to counseling, etc. In March, I decided that I would "put the relationship to bed" -- so I went down to Delaware, the place where she and I spent lots of time and I created a "Commitment Document" (the topic of another discussion, later), took the "Anchored Together" keychain that she bought for me, and threw it into the bay -- far into the bay.

I was feeling better -- not really. I was mourning the relationship and just wanted it to be over. Ironically, as I was getting to the place where I was going to throw the chain into the Bay, the song Landslide began to play:

I took my love, I took it down
Climbed a mountain and I turned around
I saw my reflection in the snow covered hills
till the landslide brought me down

Oh, mirror in the sky
What is love
Can the child within my heart rise above
Can I sail thru the changing ocean tides
Can I handle the seasons of my life

Well, Ive been afraid of changing
cause Ive built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
Children get older
Im getting older too

Oh, take my love, take it down
Climb a mountain and turn around
If you see my reflection in the snow covered hills
Well the landslide will bring it down

If you see my reflection in the snow covered hills
Well maybe the landslide will bring it down

So, I cried more and more and threw the keychain into the Bay. Ironically, I was beginning to feel better. I had a whole box of her stuff, and I was going to throw it out--the pictures, the goodbye letter, the everything. I was so whacked that I even got a Valentines Day card for her.

Instead, I threw out everything. Except the Valentines Day card and the goodbye letter. Those, I dropped in her mailbox.

That started the second interaction with her. Before, we had traded text messages a couple of times, but nothing was really exchanged. I call the first interaction a couple of emails that we traded where I wrote to her something like, "you're right I'm a big liar," then I make a bunch of ridiculous statements about how I'm such an incredible liar.

They finished with statements that while she and I were dating, I had married someone else and they were living in the side of the mountain, in the woods, where I kept them from anyone. She later told me that she had believed my statements. Ugh.

This second one was a real exchange. It started a day or two after I dropped the letter and card, and lasted for about a week. I thought we had a chance at getting back together -- for about a minute or so.

At first, the exchange was calm, with both of us writing about how much we missed the relationship. Eventually though, like any exchange with a BPD, they need to start breaking down your walls so they can force their misery on you. They start telling you how bad you are, and how you've hurt them,. which begins their first trap. By the end, it was ugly. She was being downright mean and beligerant. Sometimes, she went as far as telling me, "you're screwing with me," when, of course, I was only trying to treat her as good as possible.

It was real bad.

Her true colors came out once again.

In the middle of these exchanges, the kind side of her would come out. I remember her telling me to be sure that I turn my clock ahead for daylight savings then good night. It was wierd. It was totally borderline.

At the end, she told me that we were not meant to be together, and that she was moving on. Then, she sent me a nasty, delusional email about 30 minutes after this, calling me a character in one of my writings (a demented character). I never responded to her about that, to this day, which is nearly 1-1/2 years later.

That's how the Goodbye Letter ended. In misery.

Saint Patrick's Day to follow.

Back to Healing

The madness continues. Since I have moved out in October, she has broken up with me five, maybe six, or more times. My actions are always wrong and somehow hurt her feelings. There's no way to do anything right. Yet I still try to go back. It's gotten so rediculous that even I am tired of hearing myself talk and think.

The problem is that we had a wonderful time last weekend. Saturday night was another time made in heaven. Sunday morning, we're laying in bed and says, "I'm afraid that you'll get tired of me."

I respond with a reassuring, "I'll never get tired of you." Then the onslaught began:

"I feel like I'm not the only person who's been in this bed with you...I know you have things hid in this apartment...I'd love to dig through this place and find out what you've got...Just tell me who you've been seeing..." One after another after another, she asked me question after question.

Then I told her about the time we spent apart, when she last broke up with me. I told her that the night that she broke up with me, I went to the local bar and had a drink and met a dear friend. He and I hit it off right away, spending the night talking about our current plight and playing guitar. He introduced me to another friend of his, and the three of us sat around, listening to music and playing guitar. The perfect night that someone needs when a girl breaks your heart.

Her response. "You slept with someone. I know it." She left my place in a huff and hasn't spoken to me since.

"You lied to me," she said. Really? About what?

It's been five days since we saw each other or talked. I've sent her about six emails and the same number of text messages. She sent me one email that said "I hate you" fifty different times and ways, telling me how bad and evil of a person that I am. The transformation has occurred. She actually calls me a sadist, narcissist and other things as well.

I still try to contact her and tell her that we need to put it back together. Why?

Guess my need for companionship is that strong. I told her my deal when we started and haven't changed it. I'll now need to work on being alone more and being more comfortable with being alone. I'm your typical Non -- someone who enables the person their with and takes responsibility for them and their issues. I always thought that it was the right thing to do; I thought that it was a sign of strength -- someone will help others, a true sign of selflessness. Not true. They need to help themselves and take their own responsibility.

I told her, "I can't rescue you," at the onset of the relationship. There were times that she said, "I got you up here; I rescued you." Actually, you looked to me for rescuing and brought me into your miserable, empty, confusing, upside down world.

The problem? I miss you. I'm getting stronger every day, and am putting a solid support system in to conquer and deal with my fears. They're slowly subsiding and I'm getting stronger.

I've created a box where I put all of your things that I have including your pictures and belongings -- not much considering we lived together for a year and a half. I also wrote a goodbye letter to you that I'm not sure if I'll mail or not -- I probably won't because I think that the only reason would be to show you how hurt I am. Spent the last couple of nights grieving like I never have before, trying to figure out how it all fell apart. I know that it was never solid. But in other ways when I look back, I felt like it was solid. I guess that I'm fooling myself. We tried though -- one full year of counseling for us, me and you.

I still live in fear of you. In fear of coming home and seeing your car in my parking lot. In fear of my car or apartment being ransacked. In fear of doing things that you wouldn't like. Your shadow is still over my head.

That will go soon, I hope.

Letter to Dulcinea

Dear Dulcinea,

I am writing to inform you that I have enjoyed our relationship and I will always cherish it. However, I've realized something in the time that we have been together. Despite how I look at you and fantasize that you are the perfect woman, you are not.

In fact, once I come back to reality, I realize that you are a mask. You do not portray yourself for who you really are, and it takes some time before your mask comes off and I realize who is inside. Your inner serenity is flanked with angry rage, your honesty is lies to yourself and the world, your worldly view is more small-minded than I could imagine. You do not know your true identity and who you are -- you are a facade, a mirage, a shell of a person that only has anger in their core. I have now experienced this first-hand.

Dulcinae, I wished that you were the one for me -- my true love. But I have realized that I made you into my true love without looking at the real you. Now, part of this is because you changed into who I needed, so it took me more time to realize who you were, but also, I did not look at the real you. I accepted the unacceptable for too long and let the problems continue to grow. When I would make issue of them, you would say that I did something wrong. In fact, I began defending my own integrity so much that I could not look to see you anymore. The best defense is a good offense, Dulcinea, and your offenses kept me on my toes.

The problem, Dulcinea, is that I ultimately cannot live with such instability. If you were my true love, the one for me, our relationship would continue to blossom and build on what we have done together and the collective trust and respect. However, your lack of comfort with yourself was taken out on me, as if I had done something wrong. I could not support you fully because I was so busy constantly defending myself.

I am tired, Dulcinea. I had to leave our house to rest, but I came back to you. You continued to regularly push me away, and the rage that I saw and heard from you most recently cannot be in my life. No one has such rage and can live a normal life. I hope that you can correct these issues, Dulcinea, because there is a beautiful part of you that I will always appreciate and love its wholesomeness. However, until you learn how to appropriately display your emotions, you need to be alone. Or with another who can tolerate such emotions. I cannot.

Like I said, I will always love that part of you that is so wholesome and pure, Dulcinea. I will never forget looking into your eyes when you were calm, not anxious, and feeling like I could stare at you forever. I could have, and my heart is heavy. I still dream that you can be the beautiful princess that I imagined, but I know that, given the turmoil of the past two years, this may not ever be realistic. I will pray for you and your recovery every day and hope you can come out of your land in Oz. I know that your journey is far from over if you choose it, or you could continue this cycle of turmoil for years to come.

I wonder how you became like this, Dulcinea. I think most of it was set off when your husband died, but you had the prime ingredients for this making. You had an unhappy marriage where you were cheating, and you had a childhood that may have been happy but was certainly dysfunctional, particularly for your full development and growth. Your parents did not let you do things that normal children did, so your sheltered, controlled childhood was perfect for such a mentality of a non-developed self, rage and anger.

You alternate between helplessness and rage, playing the victim and having explosive reactions that you justify and say are appropriate. In your mind, Dulcinea, you feel like you can treat the world as you perceive them to treat you -- poorly. First, the world does not treat you poorly, and second, even if the world did treat you that way, you still need to maintain your integrity and treat others well.

I am so sorry, Dulcinea. I wanted to take you away on my horse and live the charmed life together. While a good part of our life was charmed, its core was rocky. It would continue to be rocky until you realize the situation, which you are quite some time away from realizing.

In the meantime, you will tell me that I have all of the problems, despite what is told to me by family, friends and professionals. You do not show the world the side of you that I see, and they will not see it. So, until you can come to terms with that side of yourself that contains such anger and rage, you will continue to have these issues, Dulcinea.

I am sorry to turn my back on you and stopping the cycle of dysfunction, Dulcinea. I just cannot have it in my life anymore as it is bad for me. I need to take care of myself and not worry about you, Dulcinea. In this relationship, I worried about you and you worried about you. The only reason you wanted me to communicate with you is so you could make sure that I was not doing anything to threaten you. Your needs always came before me.

I am still hurting, Dulcinea, as you can read from above, but I will work on getting better. I wish you the best in your journeys and hope that you can find the man of your dreams. When you meet that person, you need to be ready to be in the relationship and cannot have such rage and anger. I am sorry that it was not me.

Respectfully,

Don Quixote