Dear Last Year,

Our relationship has been a learning experience and this will be a bittersweet goodbye.

Thinking back to when we first met, I realized something about myself. Like all of my past relationships, caught up in the emotion of a new love, I fantasized about you before I knew you. I created an idyllic vision of you in my mind that wasn’t based on reality but instead of what I desired you to be. I tried to create you in my own image. I tried to control and shape you into what I wished you to be. And there in the childlike hope and expectation based not on who you are, but what I wanted you to be, I bound myself to certain disappointment. It was not your fault but mine. It’s not you it’s me.

I should tell you, I’m seeing a new year now. And I hope you’ll take some solace in the fact that my time spent with you, while difficult, was beneficial and helpful to me becoming a better man. It was a time of learning and growth and will help me to not place unrealistic expectations on my new suitor so that maybe, with this new year, I can have a healthier and more whole relationship than the one we shared.

So, with both angst and joy I bid you farewell. I will always remember the time we spent together. And though our relationship was difficult there was also beauty. We’ll always have January.

With love,

Nathan