Dear Jake,

I'm replaying the contradictions of your words and deeds.

You told me I wanted too much from you, that you knew my hopes and dreams. That they frightened you. But it was you who constantly told me I didn't know the future and didn't know that things between us would end badly. It was you who was upset when I implied we couldn't last. It was you who spoke of the future and convinced me of it. My future was merely a reflection of the one you carved out. One I came to long after you. You dragged me into it.

I'm too torn around you to retain all of my reason, my ability to sift through and recall.
But the above is just another lie, another excuse. For the number of times, although really not that many, that we've gone in and around this question, there is no consistency in your answers, no consistency in your expectations and complaints. My inadequacies become my redemption, my strengths become my undoing.

As always, I think every time we speak it will be the last. I thought that when we were together, my illusions came later, as you well know whether you choose to admit it or not. I hope one day you'll understand and share what you seem struggling to uncover. I love you. But what I know of you still holds true: you are two people, and not in the sense you believe. You are what you desire and you are what believe you should desire. You are Jake, the man I love, and you are the idea or ideal of who you believe you should be.

I said this to another man once, and it holds true for you: It is the height of hubris to reject God's grace and forgiveness. Who are you to continue to punish yourself for sins--real or imagined--which God has already forgiven?

You are so bound by a faith that you pretend to scorn. It both sculpts and distorts you through your distortions of it. It is not about self-loathing and affected "virtues." I wish we could have that conversation.

You say I wasn't fun, which in itself is funny, because everyone I know said the same about you. That you were needy and melancholy, indeed that's how our friendship began. You made it serious, you made me a confidant, you demanded--then scorned--intimacy and significance. You say that she's so much easier than I (and yet alternately she's a repentant sinner to my flagrant immorality), but you were the complicated one--you were astonished at my strength and the fact that I was almost always happy. Not anymore, that's not who I am. You question my desire for comparison, but it was you who established the measurement by which I was first superior, then vastly inferior to a catalog of women. I tell you this, that it was not me who began the comparisons. I couldn't tell you the whole truth, because I don't want to offend, but I honestly believe that I am far beyond all of your icons. I could list the reasons, but it really doesn't matter. Because my conception of myself and all the good things that you loved about me no longer mean anything, because you have found me wanting, devoid of the very virtues you originally praised.

I believe you left me where I found you.

I'm not sure who I hate more right now.