Dear Ex-Boyfriend and/or Husband in Musings

Dear Ex-Boyfriend and/or Husband,

I could never blame you for how weak and asinine I am. However, I can say that you have made me into the man I am today— the man that can form cohesive thoughts, even after you beat me, gave me STI’s that I live with permanently, look at me as a whore, or a worthless piece of nothing but at the same breath stare at me and lose yourself in my presence and just whisper “Man, you’re beautiful” and I have no idea or inkling of what you mean because you stared at me while I picked out a wedgie, snotted into a napkin, walked out of the bathroom after taking a major shit staring at myself in the mirror and adjusting the image that i see of myself, but you always see some sort of beauty, some innate bubbling that I consider my everyday life, but you see as some sort of magical rapture and some weird Puerto Rican brujeria that I pretend to not understand.

I can say that I loved you, I love you and I will always love you—unfortunately. To allow for our mutual growth I had to be the person that let go, because I had the most to lose. I didn’t come from your socio-economic background. I was just a pretty face in a room full of other pretty faces.. I didn’t let you go because I wanted to… because I hid your bruises from the world, I denied that I was poor and you were born rich, I denied that I couldn’t help you and you cheated on me 3 times.

The thing that always fucks me up is that… why was I always beautiful to you? Is that some sort of wicked curse that reverberates throughout my life? And I feel this way because I know you didn’t know that the shoes I pulled off of my feet were Saint Laurent, the bag you stuffed you’re phone in drunkenly was a Birkin bag, the shirt you pulled off of me was Alexander McQueen— although you didn’t know that I was a pretentious man that was created, I didn’t need your money, I hate money— you didn’t even know the shoes or the clothing you ripped off of my body before you fucked me were collectively the equivalent to a month of your trust-fund, or your college tuition for a month, or your leased motorcycle monthly bill. Or before then when I was poor and you ripped off my H&M jeans and you cheated on me with your college professor… and you cried and all I could hear as I felt so ugly and so lonely was the words of my mother saying “A Latino man always cheats, apparently even gay Latin men, but a good man covers all his tracks and doesn’t let his partner ever know because he loves you” and as it resonates in my mind as I see all the permutations of you, the DL gay guy who cheated, the trust-fund baby who clinged on to every aspect of my growth, and then the DL trust-fund baby who beat the shit out of me but “loved” me so much that he came out to his entire family.

You thought and continue to think that I am, will always be and flourish in the delicate beautiful-ness that you’ve inscribed on me. But you continually shit and abuse that beauty that you see in me.

7-carat ring at our proposal. Sliding out your car in New Rochelle and you staring at me as if I had the power to hypnotize you. Walking down the street and laughing, food fights at a drive-through, my fucking curse is that I’m fucking beautiful and I don’t fucking know what that means! Does it mean that I’m just stupid? ‘Cause a flower is beautiful— it grows from a pot of shit, it grows from your attention and love… If something is beautiful do you beat it, destroy it, rip it and prevent it from its growth? In my mind a flower is beautiful, and it’s so innocent and I want it’s essence but I know if I hurt it, I’d never absorb it’s true beauty… I hate flowers because it’s a bouquet of death, they’ve been ripped at their most beautiful to become a paradoxical, spectacle portraying the very thing it’s essence is assumed to represent— here’s a bunch of dead beautiful things to represent how much our flourishing love means to me.

And yes, dear ex-boyfriend, date, fuck-buddy, fiance, or husband… for some crazy, out of this world comprehension YOU, just YOU, believe that I am beautiful. I don’t fucking understand! Therefore, I am an anomaly to your understanding.

When a man calls me handsome, pretty, sexy, gorgeous I see in there eyes and there intent is just lust. But when I see a man like you or my understanding of you say “You’re beautiful” it’s a moment that I don’t quite grasp and then when I try to understand you explain with examples of things that are fleeting out of my personality—I become flustered and ruminate on your words and you find that beautiful. I cut your hair, give you my business advice, wear only Parfum and I catch glinpses of you watching me in the mirror, or doing every day things that everyone does and you see me as beautiful…

As far as I can grasp your idea of my assumed beautiful-ness, I am left to understand that you find some sort of allure that surpasses my aesthetic-common attractiveness.

You see me as some sort of delicate, mystery that you want to grab and kill because you have no other idea of how to absorb my essence other than to kill it.

Dear Ex-boyfriend, lover, fiance, ex-husband and the men I’ve made feel special through the curse of some glossed over idealization and understanding of my essence—you are a contradiction to the very core of me, as you understand me… and unfortunately I only find permutations of you.

But, am I? Who am I? Do I perceive myself through the understanding of what you understand of me? I’m not a fucking saint or a God, but you work hard to keep me in your grasp, but you kill the very essence that you try to hold… Like a Lennie Smalls in “Of Mice and Men”.

The most beautiful things in life are most beautiful when you allow them to exist… understand that it’s beautiful because of the essence of it’s autonomy and it’s perfect freedom doesn’t make you a distant part of it, you have to understand that once you crush that beauty, you haven’t absorbed it, but you’ve completely lost it. A caged bird sings because it somewhat knows why it’s caged, but you don’t like a caged bird because you know it’s only singing to appease your ideas of your understanding of it’s independence.

I somewhat understand that I’m beautiful because that’s what I’ve been told… but I don’t understand the extent of how you perceive me as beautiful…

I love you Ex-boyfriend, ex-husband, ex-lover. I love you in ways that you will never understand. Even through the permutations of you I love you, your essence, your power, your force that has led me to be the man that I am today. Thank you for hurting me, killing me and allowing me to be reborn.

-Andy