The Email I’m Not Sending To My Ex-Boyfriend

I try not to contact my ex-boyfriend anymore. Instead, I write out long emails to him and send them to one of my best friends. Today you get to read it.

The backstory: Raul* and I dated off and on for about six months, a few years ago. We were casual acquaintances at first – we’d see each other at parties in my hometown of Baku**, but I was never his biggest fan (a well-known writer about town, he had many fans). One night we became friends, and then a year later, lovers. It was a match made in disaster. A few months later I moved from Baku to Beirut.

Does that ever work out? Well, it didn’t in my case…

(Image via Tumblr)

Hey Raul,

What’s up? I haven’t heard from you in forever! I am egotistical enough to think that the reason you haven’t tried to keep in touch or contact me is because it’s simply too painful to bear and that I still have some sort of power over you, you know, the way that your memory has over me.

Wowee, this email got off to the WRONG start. That’s no way to say hello. I mostly want to contact you because I have no idea what to do with my life and I started writing a book and I want you to read it and tell me it’s funny. Whoa, that sounds self-seeking.

Nevermind, that’s not what I wanted to say. What I want is for you to offer to put me up in your house so I can have a place to stay in Baku that isn’t my parents’ place. I guess that’s selfish too.

Alright let me just put it all out there.

You and me, we had a connection once, remember that? Remember that time we made out at Uleg’s house and you said you hadn’t been that happy in a really long time? I really thought I could save you! Remember Turkmenistan, at the bed and breakfast, when you snored like a jackhammer and I stepped on the belt, and my toe was bleeding, and we both nearly fainted because neither of us can stand sight of blood? Then for weeks after that, I would take pictures of my foot and send them to you?

Remember that time we were on the couch at Sasha Rothmann’s Christmas party and I told you how it’d been oddly painful to get a fake divorce from my pretend husband on Facebook; how it made that ever-present feeling of being alone in the universe just that much more pronounced? And you said that was funny. You said I should write about it. That was so nice of you.

You and me baby, you and me. We had a grand total of about ten happy moments in our relationship and I replay them over and over again in my head when I’m feeling lost, the same way I imagine you re-watch episodes of the Simpsons over and over again every night.

Miss you. I still have this resentment against all writers and all men that I am hoping I can work through if I sleep with you just one last time. I guess that’s an illusion. Miss you. Give my love to your cat and to your roommate.

Love,
Nadia

*Names have been changed to protect the guilty.
**I’m not really from Baku, Azerbaijan, but let’s pretend that I am.

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