Dear... Sukotto Desu
Despite how wrong everything you’ve done to me is, seeking revenge over your stubbornness and refusal to take personal responsibility for your actions was also wrong. I should have just let you go. You are a free person. I fought so long to salvage some sort of connection and/or closure out of a combination of trauma bonding and a belief the person I knew those first few months actually existed, which I should have realized wasn’t the case at many points in time, based on many of your actions.
Mental illness does not excuse my actions, just as it does not excuse yours; however, when someone makes it known they have a disorder in advance, and you are careless with that person and that history, don’t pretend to be shocked at what happens after that.
You get to be angry and feel wronged over the end of December onward; that is my bad. I admit I went beyond the pale, because it was at that time I began to feel hatred towards you; however, you were never once threatened or made to feel unsafe, so let’s cut that act.
Before that, you absolutely do not get to blame me for doing what I needed to do to survive the traumas you put me through. You absolutely do not get to blame me for leaving you after you cheated multiple times and continued speaking to one of those individuals. You absolutely do not get to blame me for the things I said when I left. You absolutely do not get to blame me for taking my ex back so that I wouldn’t be alone. You absolutely do not get to blame me for reaching out and forgiving you when you disregarded clear boundaries by continuing to pine to my mom.
I absolutely do get to blame you for saying all those nice things to her to get me to feel sorry for you and reach out just so you could speak to me angrily and hatefully and nothing at all like what you were telling her. Do you know how few people in the world would reach out and forgive someone after all that, instead of getting angry or getting a restraining order?
Let’s be crystal clear that, although you are forgiven, you have not taken true responsibility for the following actions and that is between you and the universe now: you betrayed someone who loved you perfectly in the worst possible way, multiple times in a premeditated manner; blamed a self-diagnosed sex addiction to garner the sympathy and support your victim needed then blamed your victim for their reactions to your actions and made no consideration or allowances for their PTSD; ignored the boundaries your victim set for communicating with his family then got pissy when he ignored yours and so much more.
You have behaved hypocritically. You have behaved selfishly. You operated on double standards and used normal reactions to justify your abnormal actions. You were not a good person at the time it was said. You have not been an honest person. At least when I hurt you, I used the truth and your own actions to do so.
Worst of all, you cannot be trusted to not hurt people for your own selfish gain. You are willing to risk the mental and physical well-being of someone you love so that you can be sexually adventurous in secret. You are willing to take sympathy and support away from your victim to maintain the image you have built of yourself, to best friends who you had believing this behavior stopped a decade ago. You may change one day, but you have far to travel, and you sure have not changed yet while you are still hanging out on Grindr all the time.
I gave you absolutely everything and never mistreated you. I planned a life with you. Invited you into my home and family. Was completely unashamed of you—proud, even. I did many of the most thoughtful and romantic things I’ve ever done for you. I helped pay your mother’s rent, and made sure you were OK financially, too. I did not deserve any of this. I did not deserve what you did, or what you did after. You broke my heart.
You know, you’re fine with being forgiven, but not with forgiving. You were forgiven for sexually assaulting your roommate, but still held the fact he needed to talk about it with someone against him and could never really admit to what you did. You were forgiven for what you did to me, and you couldn’t accept that because your feelings were hurt, and never took responsibility for your actions; it was always something or someone else’s fault. People get mad when you betray them. People get mad when you cheat on them multiple times and they have to find out themselves, and read the disgusting texts that led up to the encounters. People get mad when your carelessness and deception puts them at risk of contracting a lifelong STD. Those feelings are normal. It’s common sense. Deal with it.
Despite that, you still don’t deserve to be abused out of vengeance, or made to suffer simply because I have. Salting the earth for you at the end of December, so to speak, was wrong, ugly, and petty. I am so sorry for doing that to another human being, and the fact I let myself sink to that level in response to terrible treatment is mine to bear.
Furthermore, I want to thank you. Because of your actions, I have reconciled with and fallen in love with the love of my life again, who has always supported me and took responsibility for any harm he caused or mistakes he made, like a man. It is a child who forever runs away from his mistakes.
Thank you for teaching me that some people simply make mistakes, and some people are capable of evil. Because of your actions, I have learned to recognize the feeling of hatred for the first time, and know that anyone who leads me to feel that way should not be in my life.
Because of your actions, I got to sit down in a group with all my family and friends and speak at length and in great detail about what exactly took place. It was cathartic, it brought us closer and, like the hundreds of strangers before, they sympathize with what happened and do not blame me whatsoever for those initial months, and sympathize with how hurtful it was for you to lure me into talking to you again through my mother so you could do some victim blaming. Context is everything.
Because of your actions, I’ve had to hold myself up to the light and become a better person so that no one else can ever make me feel such darkness, or have such power over me. I journeyed to a Buddhist temple to strengthen and renew my original beliefs, I began volunteering to improve the quality of life for other living things, and I became so much closer to everyone I love. The last step is admitting you are also a living thing, and you do not deserve what I was doing. It is not my job to pursue justice.
Although you stole a year of my life, you have made it so much better. I do not regret meeting you. I do not hate you any longer, even if I can still occasionally summon those feelings by thinking too long about what you’ve done. I forgive you and I forgive myself. You do not have any power over me, and this is the last time I will speak of you or to you, or mention your name. I hope one day you grow similarly so that you do not cause so much damage and suffering to another living thing. I hope you learn that doing nothing does not mean you are doing nothing, and it does not absolve you in those instances.
I am incredibly sorry for retaliating against you. For preventing your own healing and for extending your pain. For humiliating you. You did not deserve that, no matter what took place. You will also deserve happiness, when it no longer comes from the taking of others’ and you can own up to being wrong like an adult.
If I see you in public, you will be another peripheral among the crowd. You have nothing to fear from me, and you never have. I am letting you go. I am accepting reality. I am saying goodbye. May you one day achieve nirvana, sukottodesu.