The E-mail

Two weeks ago, I received an email from an ex-boyfriend who I have blocked on all social media platforms, as well as his phone number. Four years ago, he sent me an email that he wrote to look like a short four-line poem. To…impress me?

The first and only story I’ve published won second place in the literary issue of the Louisville Eccentric Observer. You can read it here. I mention this because it is a fictional account of the last time I willingly saw this man who just can’t seem to take a hint.

 

In the email, it was the first time I’ve seen him string complete sentences together. Wasn’t sure he had it in him. He thought he had a chance because he has “grown-up.” It’s borderline harassment and I am unsure of how to express my anger. So here I am. 

 

Why am I an angry woman? Because of this bullshit. Because what if the universe is telling me this is what I deserve? Because my boundaries are not being respected? Because I shouldn’t have to keep finding ways to keep him out of my life? I thought seeing him in the waiting room of my therapist’s office would be the last time I would ever have to deal with him. 

 

It’s the fact he contacted me at all. Although he acknowledged he hasn’t treated me well in the past he still could not utter the words I’m Sorry. It’s a complete delusion of social decency and self-awareness. The very point of making contact in itself is a symbol of how not “grown-up” he claims to be. It is a direct acknowledgment of his inability to consider my feelings. It’s not about me. It’s about him. It always has been. Alanis Morissette should write a song about this.

 

He isn’t writing to the person I am today. He is trying to contact the person I used to be. He is emotionally manspreading in a space where he thinks there is room for someone like him. 

 

As I was driving home from work the day he sent me the email there were puddles in my eyes. I’ve worked so fucking hard on myself and he here was reminding me of who I used to be; who I had to fucking fight for. (I don’t care about ending a sentence in a preposition. Break the fucking rules.) Here he was taking up space that he doesn’t deserve. 

 

There are seventeen years between the ages of nineteen and thirty-six. He will never learn what I have already figured out.