I thought of you tonight while I washed my dishes. I thought of all the hundreds of dishes I washed living with you, the nights spent together but apart, the gulf between us growing wider and wider.

Some days I still believe that I blew my one chance—my chance at happiness, at a healthy relationship, at security. You embodied every dream I’d ever thought I was supposed to have…a home, a family, a stable life. The things I thought would make me happy. The things I’d been fantasizing about, taught to fantasize about, for most of my life. Small wonder that you crumbled under the pressure. I learned a lesson there. The expectations I put on myself are taxing and unreasonable enough. Foisting them onto others is only going to drive us apart. If anything, these ideals of mine are just guarantees that we will both fail, in my eyes. How could any human live up to them? It’s not possible. This game is rigged. The milk bottles are glued to the platform.

I re-read our last emails, about trying to cope with each other here and now. You are in love. I really want to just be happy for you. But to me, it still feels like being replaced. And not by someone that you met and felt some magical spark with—rather, someone who just grew on you over time. I don’t know why that matters so much to me, but it does.

It’s like, driving into the next town and waiting in line for hours for the best steak around…and then when you can’t have the steak, grabbing a burger and being just as happy, just as satisfied. I’d never loved someone, never imagined myself old with someone. You were not some guy that just stuck around long enough to attach himself to me. I chose you. You chose me. At least, that’s how I felt. I thought I was the best steak in the county. But now I wonder if I’m really a hamburger after all?

This is not about wanting it back. Every time I feel like crying, I remind myself, I don’t want it back. Not really. What I want back are memories, the first year, the happiness, the things I dreamed up in my head. The simple way we enjoyed each other before dishes came into the picture.

The men I’ve dated say they don’t feel I’m over it. It is a problem for them. I tell them I am, I am over it. And I believe I am. I’m excited about new possibilities now, I see things in a positive light. I am open and ready and out there. Scared but taking steps in the right direction.

It’s just that some nights, with a fever or if I’m very beat, it’s easy to let this little voice convince me that for whatever reason, we get one chance and one chance only at finding that happiness. And that that was my chance.

I’ve gotta find a religion and fast! To think, all this self-loathing, and I’m not even applying it to Afterlife Rewards Points™!