Dear boys,
Thanks so much for blatantly leading me on right before the new year when we were supposed to be hanging out as "friends." I had no high hopes of getting back together until you'd said the things that you'd said. Then you said "nevermind" and broke my heart again, completely undoing the year's worth of progress I'd made in getting over you in one night. I still love you immensely and I don't think you realize the depth of it at all. Wish I could hate you, but I can't.

Thanks also to your best friend for empathizing and consoling me when I felt like I had nothing left to lose after losing you, just to fool around with me because he could never mess around with me when we were dating, and then telling me he'd never date me because he wouldn't want to do that to you.

Thanks Buzby for the excellent conversation in that dive bar in delaware, and giving me the confidence/courage to offer my phone number to you, only to find out you had a girlfriend. Thanks also for keeping in touch with me while you were on tour and I was on vacation, driving from Jersey to hang out with me, playing guitar on my grandparent's porch and the sing a longs out of the back of your car in parking lots, for telling me "I should be excited when I think about marrying my gf, right? Because I don't" Thanks also for paying for everything related to our dates (even though I really kind of didn't like that) and then for breaking up with your girlfriend to spend a weekend with me in Philly (naked in an expensive suite, fucking all night, and then showering together the next morning) only to take a walk with me in Love park the next day to tell me how you didn't want to date anyone. You'd already taken me to meet your brother and his fiancee and introduced me to your bandmates. You were the first person I was opening up to and feeling butterflies for since the aforementioned boyfriend, and...

Dear boys,
Thanks so much for blatantly leading me on right before the new year when we were supposed to be hanging out as "friends." I had no high hopes of getting back together until you'd said the things that you'd said. Then you said "nevermind" and broke my heart again, completely undoing the year's worth of progress I'd made in getting over you in one night. I still love you immensely and I don't think you realize the depth of it at all. Wish I could hate you, but I can't.

Thanks also to your best friend for empathizing and consoling me when I felt like I had nothing left to lose after losing you, just to fool around with me because he could never mess around with me when we were dating, and then telling me he'd never date me because he wouldn't want to do that to you.

Thanks Buzby for the excellent conversation in that dive bar in delaware, and giving me the confidence/courage to offer my phone number to you, only to find out you had a girlfriend. Thanks also for keeping in touch with me while you were on tour and I was on vacation, driving from Jersey to hang out with me, playing guitar on my grandparent's porch and the sing a longs out of the back of your car in parking lots, for telling me "I should be excited when I think about marrying my gf, right? Because I don't" Thanks also for paying for everything related to our dates (even though I really kind of didn't like that) and then for breaking up with your girlfriend to spend a weekend with me in Philly (naked in an expensive suite, fucking all night, and then showering together the next morning) only to take a walk with me in Love park the next day to tell me how you didn't want to date anyone. You'd already taken me to meet your brother and his fiancee and introduced me to your bandmates. You were the first person I was opening up to and feeling butterflies for since the aforementioned boyfriend, and that was a shame. Thanks for also promptly getting back with your ex-girlfriend less than a couple of weeks later.

Thanks drummer dude band boy for knowing I like you, but not giving a shit about what anyone else wants but you. You truly are selfish and leaving the poker game we were hanging out at so abruptly just to hang out with your best friend really hurt my fucking feelings. Thanks also for showing up downstairs at one of the poker nights to see me, and then leaving before you even came upstairs to see me because you were too high to handle hanging out. Wish I'd never begun liking you, or your stupid band, kissed you, or blew you in the back seat of your car.

Thanks charismatic, poker playing U of D frat boy who made me feel like he really liked me. I fooled around with you and ended up naked even though I didn't want to...I knew you wanted nothing more of me than that, but you had beautiful, begging eyes, a boyish smile, and a very successful form of manipulation. Once you stopped coming to poker nights because of your new class schedule, you stopped talking to me alltogether; I knew you would.

Thanks tattoo artist for knowing me for years from being your client, but only calling me to hang when you're manic. I know you can't help your disorder(s) or your moods or whatever thoughts race in your brain, but whenever we hang out we fuck and try to feel a connection with each other because we're lonely people. I drop you off at the shop in the morning, then I don't see you for a while or hear from you until you send me a sweet drunken text a few weeks later. You won't pull the trigger and actually try to date me, because you're terrified of a relationship--so am I, but I still imagine myself in your house for longer than a night and doing domestic things like mopping your floor or making you lasagna.

Thanks alcoholic, pathological liar ex whom I dated for four years only to realize that I wasn't sure what of our four years was actually true. I dated you on and off a year later while and after you were in rehab, and wrote you letters every other day while you were admitted. I also was the only one to visit you and pick you up after that stint (It was quite the drive). I thought you were evaluating yourself and striving for a life that demands rigorous honesty...but you'd just gotten better at obscuring the truth. I understand you had to move on to someone who doesn't know any better and you have to villainize those (like your family and myself) who call you out on your bullshit. Good luck with that. At least your family still loves me, regardless of us not being together.

Thanks to my best friend and first love and ex, who's been around for the last nine years and always tells me what's what. I've always appreciated that, but like I drunkenly told you with my face completely soaked in tears in your car parked outside the bowling alley that Saturday night, I still hope one day you realize that our connection is THE connection. I still hope that you can get psyched about me again because I'll never find another connection like the one we have, so keep being my friend, but know that with that I'll never be satisfied. I love you more than anyone in this world...and I just want you to be happy.

I'd just posted this in the "Dear ___" thread in the Dating Sucks group. It felt good to rant and to see the lengthy sum of my emotional dysfunction spelled out in paragraph form right in front of me.