Julie,

You can feel confident that my involvement with Dan has been terminated. I can’t take anymore pain and hurt and lies and deception and manipulation. Dan knows that above all things, I hate manipulation. I fully and completely believe at this point that he lied and manipulated me to keep me involved. And that knowledge absolutely crushes me.

You say that you don’t understand me, yet you do. You obviously know what it is to truly love someone; after all, you have forgiven Dan and allowed him to stay. Julie, understand that as heinous and morally corrupt as it was for me to be involved with him, I truly believed every word he said to me about needing me, about being unhappy, about everything. And I loved him passionately, fiercely…despite the grinding of my continually-eroding conscience. I fought for just a little more time with him, knowing that one day he would tell me he couldn’t see me anymore. I know I am guilty of moral turpitude. I am living out the consequence of that moment by moment. If you wished my soul to be tortured, if you wished every bit of hurt back on me that I have inflicted on you, you have gotten your wish. I have seen my life systematically fall apart over the last year. Losing Dan is just one more devastation in what has been a series of dashed hopes, failures and crushing defeats. I am beaten. I am discouraged. I am utterly devastated. And you have every right to bask in the glow of my hurt and humiliation. I lost. I am alone. I will most likely be alone for a long time to come and honestly doubt whether I will ever have a happy ending. Consider yourself the winner in every aspect. You most definitely are.

-L.