And I Am Finally Seeing, Why I Was The One Worth Leaving

The last step in getting over someone is discovering all the things you did that hurt them. Confronting those wrongs, your flaws; and in that realization, something changes. And you can finally leave.

I used to believe, vainly, that this Nietzsche quote applied to me: "Independence is for the very few, [for those] not only strong, but also daring to the point of recklessness. He enters into a labyrinth, no one can see how and where he loses his way, becomes lonely, and is torn piecemeal. And he cannot go back." But I was never really lost before. I was never lonely. I had my gang of misfits, and my gang of ideas. They evaporated in the hot light of his cynicism. I can't call him anymore, and my friends don't want to hear about him or what he thinks — in the end, they decided he's too cocky, proprietary, doesn't recycle. Our love affair was a thrilling voyage into hostile territory, and now I'd returned home — to the things I think, to the things I know — and it didn't feel like home anymore. I can't make it in his world — can't afford it for one thing, don't like it for another — but I no longer wanted to be in mine. Having fallen into a void, now I was lost, now I was lonely. Now I was free.

-Lisa Carver