I'm sorry for this.

I found the picture of you and I today from your senior prom. You know the one. You had it framed for me before you left for college that fall, and it has followed me through move after move, never far from reach. I remember the first time I saw it, in a collage of pictures your parents had made of you at your graduation party. It took my breath away; literally, I remember thinking that there would never be any greater love in this world than the love we had. You're looking at me with such... longing. As though in your eyes, I'm the most beautiful person in the world, and you can't imagine your world without me. If I look at the picture as a metaphor for our relationship it seems accurate; you're staring at me, awaiting my next move, while I barely lift my eyes to the camera, still not sure of what I'm doing there.

I tackled my room today. You'd be proud. I found a note from you from last year, a chore list, meant as a joke, but a serious one. In it, you ask me to not let things continue to rot in the fridge, or for dishes to grow mold in the sink. You ask me to vacuum and do laundry, and occasionally, put things back after I get them out. You adamantly remind me that I shouldn't buy any more things for the apartment that we don't need. I laughed when I read it, and showed it to Sam and Jules, but it brought it all back. The expectations, and how neither of us could ever seem to meet those of the other. I never thought that I asked for a lot, but maybe I did. Or maybe I just thought you could do anything. I don't really know.

I didn't want to be reminded of you today any more than I already had been. And if being forced into it, I wanted to only remember the bad, never the good. But you follow me, just like our picture, and I couldn't escape. All the things of you that I've hidden over the last year suddenly found their way to the surface, and I relived all the different emotions. Do you know what it's like to realize that the person you love the most, no longer fits that description? I suppose that you do, but it's hard just the same. I know that I let you down in all the ways a person can, and I'm sorry for that. I don't want to be but I am. But I want you to know that you let me down, too. I think that I would have loved you forever.

I'm not sure how much more of this there will be. It's been almost a year since I came home and found my room rearranged, along with a new life without you in it. I'm still grateful that you did what you did; that you stayed with me that night and let me think, against all odds, that the decision was hard for you. I'm grateful that I didn't know the last time I saw you would be just that, and so there were no tearful goodbyes, just a kiss on the lips and a, "I'll call you later."

You're not forgiven for what you did. You never will be. You were wrong and I will always hate you for the lies, the hurt, the tears. You can't undo damage like that; it's irreparable. But sometimes, late at night or when the sun starts to set, I think of the moment in the picture and know that we weren't always the couple that people felt bad for. For a time, we were the ones to envy. And that's enough for me.