Pre-emptive strike

I kind of wanted to be silent about The Pedant’s letter and let him twist in the wind for a while. He is, after all, the person who didn’t respond to my “I’m not happy, I don’t feel like you’re even into me, do you even want to be dating me?” email (which culminated in our first breakup, years ago) for nine fucking days. He’s the person who was consistently hours late every time he had plans with me. He should get a chance to feel what it’s like to wait.

Buttttt, I’m pretty positive if didn’t write back pretty soon, he’d send me an anxious “did you get my letter?” prompt via text message. And possibly this prompt would include a demand for some sort of conclusive response: that I tell him I want to be friends, or tell him I want to get back together, or tell him I have feelings for him still, or some other thing that I don’t want to be cornered into giving an answer about.

So I just pre-emptively sent him a text saying that I received his letter and mostly I’m just processing the fact that he doesn’t actually hate me.

See, how I actually ended my final breakup email to him was, verbatim: “I’m open to being friends. I typically need a few months of radio silence before I can make that transition, though.”

What I thought I was telling him was: “I need a few months of silence from you and after that I can probably be friends in some capacity, so feel free to get in touch with me whenever you want – after a couple of months have gone by.”

What he apparently heard was: “Don’t contact me ever again unless I contact you first.” Since popping back up on my radar he’s said some version of “I know you don’t want me to talk to you, but -” at least three times.

But yeah, all I really said to him was not to contact me for a few months, so when a year and a half went by without him so much as “liking” a Facebook post of mine, I figured he was feeling super bitter at being dumped and just never wanted to talk to me again.

Allegedly though he’s been missing me all this time, and that’s coming as a complete surprise to me. And that sense of surprise is my main reaction to his letter. Or at least that’s what I’m officially telling him. As you can probably see, there is obviously a lot of nostalgia and bitterness coming up for me, too.