a request to john

I realize that I write you long emails, on average, once a week. I apologize for that, I really do. I am in a weird place right now and feel. Oftentimes when I write these emails they go unanswered because of busy schedules and lack of time and I receive abbreviated answers, none at all, or a confusing and foolish act. I know you may think I know that answers, and maybe I do deep inside, maybe I just need to hear them again so I can once again digest them and do my very best to accept them. So here goes…

I don’t really understand what direction we are headed in, friends, moving toward each other, moving further away, to an end, to a potential future? What is it? I keep trying to set boundaries that I am unable to keep and maintain and it dawned on me that I need to come at this from a different angle. I don’t need to make “Turner bans,” I need to work on friendliness, but also being guarded and finding a way to protect and heal a heart that aches for you.

That being said, I do want to tell you, somehow, where I am now. I am still the same Alicia you met two and half years ago, as I was last year, and as I am now, but there are things that are different about me. There are behaviors I have changed and actions that I take to be healthy, mentally and physically. I am doing all of those things that you thought would have “saved” us, and I am not doing them to impress you, I am doing them because I truly want to do them. I truly want to be a good and better mother, I want be at the gym, I love it, although I remain guarded, I enjoy talking and hanging out with my family. There are other things that I have begun to do because I want to, I have friends, I feel bold, I feel good about me, I like me, I am comfortable in my own skin. None of these things are fleeting or temporary, they are real, they are my reality. If those things could have saved us, couldn’t they maintain us and help up thrive now?

On the matter of us, I believe that we have improved. We are supportive and understanding of each other, we show raw emotion, and it isn’t rejected or belittled, but heard, we seem to understand each other more and better. I believe that we should give us another chance. I believe that we should, well, date. Instead of saying that it wasn’t working, we tried, it wasn’t working, take a good and honest look at the progress and differences now, and give what could be the rest of our lives another chance. We can’t go through life allowing our pain and our past dictate how we behave and how we live. I would like to try us again. I believe in us. I believe we might even fall in love with each other again, but in a different and healthy way.

If the above isn’t what you want, isn’t where you are, tell me, even if you think you have told me a dozen times. I’m not going to “ban” you from Turner or from me. I will simply be more cognizant of the things I need to do, the interactions I need to or don’t need to have in order to remain healthy, to grow, to heal, and to find true and real love again. I won’t be mean or spiteful or angry, I will accept. I believe we belong together, I believe we need each other, I believe in us, but the thing about all of that is a relationship isn’t one person’s decision, and one person’s love, feelings, or beliefs can’t change another’s.

I, again, apologize for sending this to you when you are so incredibly busy and tired. I’m sorry. Also, no matter what the response, you are still invited to Shrek, if you can make it.