I would like to preface this letter that I come from a place of compassion and I really didn’t think I would actually write to you about everything, but here I am and I have a feeling you expected this from me someday… 

I would have preferred to express my sentiments over the phone or in person but perhaps this is actually best; for you to digest, and a moment for myself to hold space for my truth, to release and acknowledge the feelings I have been burdened by not communicating them. I stayed quiet for the idea of “peace” but was filled with turmoil and a mentally exhausting war in my mind. You might find the beginning of this letter a bit triggering but know that it gets better and please know that if I had written this in October / November / December you would have received a completely different letter.

I’m not quite sure where to begin? I know this is my last step to healing though, confronting the situation. I experienced a spiritual phenomenon known as the “Dark Night of the Soul” For the first week after your departure, I felt.. okay? In a state of shock I guess, so I mostly felt numb. Nothing else. That all changed quickly though when the realization of what happened finally set in. I want to say it was roughly maybe for two months that I woke up in bed every single day crying, I went to sleep every night, crying, sobbing. During the day I was just going through the motions, not even close to present. 

I avoided going home, I wouldn’t get in the house until 3-5 in the morning almost every day. Going to “sleep” at 6/7. It never failed, I would come inside the house and instantly cry. I felt like I was living in a haunted house, I was truly haunted by apparitions of you - even in my car. I couldn’t listen to music. I pay too much attention to lyrics and words and everything hurt to hear, I just wanted to shut my mind off. I listened to nothing for a long while. Finally wanting to hear music again, I couldn’t even listen to anything I used to listen to when you were around because again, the ghost of you haunted me and I still wasn’t ready to listen to lyrics, I just listened to trippy and electronic beats for about a month until I ventured into new and old music again. I didn’t unpack until mid-December! We moved in September, it was so wild to think I lived like that. I felt like trash and avoided being in that space so badly, it hurt too much. 

It was different for you, you got to leave and see new surroundings. You left and abandoned me, you never called to see how I was doing, never checked in, nothing. It was like I was never there, like I never mattered, like I didn’t exist. Memories, they soon delete, like you wanted to erase me. Obliterating me from your existence, it was yet another layer of cruelty to endure. I felt like I was losing my mind, my mental health had never been so poor. I was severely depressed, I started to wonder if I was bipolar, knowing a traumatic event could trigger that as an adult if it was hereditary and knowing I was experimenting heavily with psychedelics. Ironically I had no taste for alcohol, my spirit constantly rejected it. I also have not been physically intimate with anyone, I have had absolutely no desire whatsoever. (I’m okay with that though) I have channeled all of that energy into creating, creating so much it was another high. It was an escape from reality, it was the only time I was completely present in the moment that I wasn’t plagued with thinking of anything else. After a while though, it eventually caught up to me. I became exhausted, I knew I had to face myself again. I stopped cooking for months, I couldn’t even recognize myself. 

A person I barely knew asked me what happened to me in mid conversation one day, perplexed I asked, “What do you mean?” Our interactions had only been surface level since we only know each other through work and he mentioned the light behind my eyes was gone. That I used to glow and emit light when they first met me, and that I seemed unrecognizable. I felt like I was punched in the stomach to feel so seen by basically someone who was a stranger. I took a moment to breathe before being able to answer to shrug off the comment.

What was it about this connection that left me this way? Let me explain, It was the fact that I had always been transparent with the way I felt about you since the very beginning, right? The fact that I never loved anyone more, I gave you my heart with pure intention and naturally I am shrewd with whom I give my love to, I do not just give it away. I opened myself up to you. Organically, it was pure and honest and at one point you showed me your heart and it was as pure as mine. I genuinely saw myself spending the rest of my life with you. I never thought about marrying anyone before you. I never wanted to have children with anyone else.. I was mourning the loss of you, the betrayal, mourning the idea of a life journey filled with co-creating bodies of work and some babies on different continents. I felt irrevocably broken, as if I was stabbed in the back and the chest altogether. You experienced first-hand how deeply I love, well I experienced heartbreak just as deeply. I was overwhelmed with feelings I never experienced before. At least not to the depth of them anyway. I went through hate, anger, resentment, heartbreak etc. Sure, I’ve experienced loss, melancholy, betrayal, but this just was magnetized in such a different way. I used to ask myself all the time, “What did I do to deserve this?“

For so long all I wanted was to just receive an apology. Acknowledgement for how you hurt me. Maybe that’s why you don’t really respond when I ask what are you up to, or when I call, maybe hearing from me triggers you to a moment that you aren’t so proud of. I don’t know. I would wonder if you ever thought about apologizing to me, how could you have done that to me? To ME. You always told me I was an amazing woman, well then why treat me the way you did? I was there for you in any way I could. I looked out for you as my partner, I was ride or die, your biggest cheerleader, I heard you out, I nagged you to get your unemployment, you get your money and bounce on me. Not even trying to tell me that you got your retroactive pay. And came to find out you had been planning to leave for a little while, so what was the rush to move out of Brooklyn if you knew you were going to leave anyway? Why let me get rid of Palo Santo if you knew you were leaving anyway? Wasn’t I good, King? Maybe too much of a good thing? Huh? Didn’t I spoil you? Me or the money, what you loyal to? I was as loyal as a dog and you dogged me out. It was no mistake that your friend said Berlin and this whole time you wanted me to think you were going to London. Why though? What was the point of you trying to manipulate me into thinking that? What was the difference between London and Berlin? Europe is Europe, you weren’t in New York.

 
Intuitively I knew something was off for some time, I suppose since you had started scheming. But I neglected and avoided my intuition and decided to follow blind faith. They say love is blind, that’s true. I turned a blind eye to the vibration because I truly love(d) you. I didn’t want to invade your privacy, I also didn’t know how to handle your moods, they really affected me, I absorbed them like a sponge that it almost seemed like mine but this was the root of my own shutdown. I started to feel stuck and not knowing how to communicate because I was overwhelmed with the intensity of knowing something was wrong and the intensity of how I felt about you. 

So after hearing your friend say you were going to Berlin and then I asked you about it, your face totally confirmed it but you still lied. You looked like a little boy that got caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to do, it was child-like, the reaction. I knew you were lying so I just had to check for myself. For so long I respected your privacy but I couldn’t be lied to any longer, you knew I went through your phone but didn’t want to acknowledge it. When I wanted to go for a walk and talk about the truth, you gaslighted me into saying that I was going to believe whatever I wanted to anyway and I was just at a loss for words at that point, it felt like a losing battle. How were you going to act like my own eyes lied to me? I surrendered, what was it going to change anyway. But there was a lesson in all this for me too, to communicate and stand my ground. I let you off easy because I loved you and didn’t want to feel like I was in your way. There was so many layers to the betrayal Man. I held you down emotionally, financially, spiritually, physically and you lied to me, left me, conned a girl you knew was in love with you to get you a Sweetheart Visa and started mackin’ to another girl while I was away at work, while we were together in a whole relationship, living together. 

What was also upsetting is that you insulted my intelligence on a constant basis but never so much so than when you sent me the photo of you in front of an old airplane with German insignia claiming to join the British Army.. Did you really think I wasn’t educated? Like I wasn’t taught flags in Middle School Geography? Like, damn. That’s all the past though…

My only wish is that you would have departed differently. The right thing to do would have been to tell me that you didn’t harbour the same feelings for me anymore. Knowing that you were going to leave and get your money, ask Aly or Yasir to stay with them for a few weeks till you embarked on your new journey. Leaving with integrity and respect for me as someone who showed respect for you through and through. It would have saved us both a lot of heartache, at least me for sure. It didn’t have to be that convoluted. If you came at me with authenticity and truth I would have been okay. 

You go through cycles where you pretend like you have no heart and I know you had to fend for yourself from a very early age but I was never going to abandon you. When emotions run deep and show signs of longevity something is triggered inside you to run and want to bury yourself in your work. (It’s perfectly okay to be consumed with your calling but it shouldn’t be an escape) You run away from responsibility, when I gave you the kind of loyalty you always searched for, it was too much for you. You are a creative genius with a certain degree of emotional poverty that makes you destructive and leads into a repeated cycle of self-sabotage.

Heal what hurt you. I’m rooting for you. I wish you nothing but peace. I want you to heal, I want you to be happy. It’s funny Kenny, you’re actually one of the most loving people I know. Really. I know you’re just hurt and damaged but inside of you is someone who yearns to be loved. Who wants to give love, but you have to stop running away. When you told me the day after Thanksgiving that you were thankful that I showed you what love is and how to love, it broke my heart all over again. I gathered there was someone else to have made you write it that way but I guess if I can gift anyone that, it’s the most beautiful gift. 

I would have never gotten in your way of leaving the country, know that. That’s not who I am. I would have respected whatever your feelings were while still honoring my own. Take care of you, by all means I would have stood by your decision. I want you to commit to your self-growth even if that meant I wasn’t going to be around for it you should have just been honest, that’s the lesson here. Being honest. 

I told you this early on during your Donnie Darko moment; hurt people, hurt people – I said this when I was vibrating at a higher frequency than when you left and it took me to go through the Dark Night of the Soul to remember that all over again. So truly, I come with compassion, I don’t want to label you as a narcissist, a psychopath, I don’t believe those things about you. Compassion is a breakdown of all the barriers between us, a heart-to-heart bonding. Your pain is my pain. It is mingled and shared between us.

You know Velvet Rope is my favorite album. Janet Jackson said it best, and it’s where I’m finally at in this chapter. “You don’t have to hold on to the pain, to hold on to the memory.” I’m finally here. Without pain. With nothing but love for you. I see you. I know you. I myself have done things ten years ago I was ashamed of and hurt someone close to me. There is no doubt in my mind I know you from many lifetimes before. There is no doubt in my mind that we were meant to cross paths. I do not regret our connection, through the good and the bad I learned so much about myself. There is a deep soul bond we share and I do love you for life.