A letter to a liar: "I loved you. Then I found out you were married the entire 2 years."

An open letter to a coward:

Two days ago you wrote me a letter entitled, “The Truth”. In it you outlined the process whereby you fictionalised two years of my life and justified the ways in which you chose not to mention that you were indeed still married to your wife and indeed still living together in the home you have shared for many years. You called it The Truth. But I would like to take this opportunity to correct you.

Here is “The True Truth”.

You are a liar. You chose lying every morning when you woke. Every single morning. Because you are also selfish. You wanted me and you knew I wouldn’t want you if I knew the truth. You’re right. I told you so many times that I loved you. But here it is. I take it back. I didn’t love you. I loved Fake You. He was a really good man. You are not a good man.

You let me believe in our future. Do you remember when we planned a wedding together over the phone? I remember. Do you remember that we did that without being engaged? I remember. And now I know why.

The truth is that I began to believe that I would have a wonderful life with you. Because we planned it all. Together. You let me believe that after maintaining a long-distance relationship, we would be living together in a place we had chosen together and that we would travel the world together and we would one day live near the water and be close to my family because you loved them. And all of that was a lie. One week before I moved to Melbourne to be with you permanently, you decided to finally tell ‘The Truth’. And let us be clear about that. You only did it because there was no way out. If I hadn’t been moving, you would have continued the lie.

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You lied to me. You lied to my friends. You lied to my family. You befriended those closest to me. You used me to create yourself a social life. You took advantage of those I love. You attended my brother’s wedding and took advantage of every generosity and kindness offered.

The truth is I defended you to those who doubted your story. There were some who did. Of course all the little pieces of truth are finally falling into my mind like confetti. My name in your phone was a word in another language. Your wife’s calling to discuss your son. Never once meeting a member of your family. Writing these examples, I’m tempted towards shame and embarrassment. But I will not let you have that.

As I only loved Fake You, you own not a single memory of this love. Because it was a wonderful, strong, brave love. I loved you with every patient, forgiving, trustful cell in my body. I gave you every part of my soul, my body, my brain and my privacy. But that was Fake You. Real You gets nothing. You can pretend that I loved you. You can pretend that you were “allowed” to be the real you as you have told me. But you weren’t.

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I am raging against you. You stole from me. You made me complicit in your deception without my knowledge and consent.

Thank you for your cowardice. Because any time I am tempted to love Real You, I will remember that I don’t. I can’t. And I have nothing but the worst emotion left for you - pity.

You told me so many times that you loved to read my writing and nagged me to write more. Funny, I felt I had nothing to write. I believed myself content. Happy. In love. There was an ‘us’. I was not just a ‘me’. And it was wonderful.

But it was a lie.

So now I write.

And here is the good news: While I pity you, I withhold this pity from myself. With every fibre of my being I will not allow myself to want you back. While you have destroyed the picture of my future I had built, I will build another one which excludes you.

I am strong. I am wilful. I am determined. I will come back from this like I come back from every hurdle in my life. Because I have everything that counts; love, support, friendship and truth. I will continue to believe in love because it came from within me and can come from within me again. I am alone in only one sense of the word and as hard as that will be, it will teach me how to love myself enough again. I am not bitter, I am resolute. I am not as broken as I initially believed. All the working parts remain.

Hear me now. You have taken nothing from me. Repair yourself if you can. You lying son of a bitch.