Dear Michelle

Even when we were apart, whenever you needed anything, I gave it to you.  Whenever you needed me, I was there.  I needed you last night.  I needed someone, my special someone, to tell me that it was worth it to stay on this planet.  My heart has been slowly breaking for years, and last night, it shattered.  I'll never understand why you strung me along for so long.  Why you married me and had a baby with me just to do this.  I was bothering no one.  I was alone in my room, and didn't want to feel any more pain.  Yet I've been made to hurt more in the last seven years than I have in all the days before I met you, accident and previous heartbreak included.  I never earned that, did nothing to deserve how I've been treated.  I've come through for you whenever you needed me, and we both know that if you were to tell me tomorrow that you needed my help, I'd do whatever I had to do to make sure I was there for you.  I'd do whatever I could to help you.
I'm not the real monster in this story.  I never was.  I"m just a guy who has been hurt more, physically and emotionally, than he ever deserved, a man who keeps opening his heart just so life can cut it open and piss in the wound.  I thought when I met you, that finally, I could be at peace.  Here was this beautiful woman who, for whatever reason, had sought me out, and wanted me...me, who didn't have anything to offer except undying love and devotion, and who would do anything to experience true love, to be truly happy, even if I had had to wait so long to find it, a woman who seemed like Heaven itself had made her just for me.
Do you remember how we fit together?  Do you remember that night, all the little things we discovered about each other, and how they seemed to match?  I do.
I can remember the night when I left to see you that first time.  I remember standing by my mom's car, getting ready to leave on the fourteen hour drive to see you, and saying out loud, "Well, Michael, this is it.  This is the start of a new chapter in your life.  This woman will either save you, or destroy you completely."
I guess we both know now which of those outcomes it truly was.  When I look back at all I have lost, all I had to give up, all I continue to lose, because of how I feel for you, it makes me realize how little any of it meant, how little I really mean, and have ever meant.
You were, and are, everything to me.  Now, I have nothing.  I have even less than I did when we met, after all the struggle, after all the hours of working through blinding pain just to provide for us, after all the special moments we shared, I come away knowing none of it was real.  All that effort and time and emotional energy wasted.  I was afraid to tell you how much it hurt when I worked, because I didn't want to lose you.  Sometimes I couldn't help it, but I kept the vast majority of my own pain and heartache to myself.  Inside, I knew you didn't care, that you just wanted what you wanted, and I wanted to be the one to give it to you.
I can't help but wonder - if I hadn't had that accident, if I hadn't had to deal with the effects of the severe pain, ptsd, and other effects, would it have made a difference?  I was more dynamic before it happened, and perhaps if I had never tried to be there for Katrina, my temper would likely never have come out the way it did when we were together...so, would it have made a difference, or was our entire relationship planned from the start?  Did you ever love me?  Even a little? 
You have no idea how much it hurts to write to you.  I just want to leave now.  I used to see life as the most precious thing we have.  Now, it is just a vehicle for pain, and I just want it to stop.  It feels like the hourglass of my life is running out, and I just don't have the heart to turn it over.  All I ever wanted was to love you, to be or do whatever was needed to have you share that love with me.  You did it once, and it was the brightest spot in my life.  
There have been times where I was harsh.  There were times where I lost my temper  (and regretted it every time, but I was human, and sometimes it just happened despite me wanting otherwise).  But never, ever, have I done things deliberately that I knew would hurt you.  Ever.  You meant too much for me to even consider it.  Yet time has shown that you would draw me back, just to go and find another way to hurt me, and you did it knowing how it would hurt.  There were times where I may have come off like an ass, but I could never do that to you.  Had the situation been reversed (and it was, many times), I would never have let those things keep me from you, or be cause enough to throw away the one person I felt was perfect for me.  You went past the deal-breaker line many times with me, the latest is just the most blatant example, and I never gave up.  You even left that piece of shit sister-raping ass-hat, because you knew I'd never give up on you, never stop fighting for you.  You said so yourself.  So...you dip even lower into the barrel?  It just doesn't make sense, no matter what you tell yourself in the end.  Do you even understand how much you hurt me these years?  How I stood by while you kept finding someone..any one..to leave me for, and each was a lower life form than the last?  Can you imagine the pain of seeing the person you love more than anyone you've ever loved, pushing you aside for something less?  It would be like me wanting to sleep with a lice-covered, disease-ridden, toothless meth-whore rather than you.  Or, better yet, like you being tossed aside by these idiots you go after for that above example.  Would you even care then, or would you just go 'oh well..next' ?  I can't do that.  I don't just casually give over my heart on a whim.  It had to be you, someone who had everything I wanted in a person, both creatively and emotionally, who fit me like you did, had the qualities you had, for me to even consider it.  I gave you my heart completely, and if it looked like I was angry sometimes, it was because you did not seem to know how much I sacrificed, or place any value on the value I placed on you.
Everything, including the piece you wrote about yourself that you shared when we first met, shows that you have some issues.  You always admitted it, when it helped your case, but refused to see it when it applied to us.  This is something we both know to be true.  I don't feel it was all me....that wouldn't even make sense.  We both know how much i would do, how far I would go, just to make you have a nice day, to make you happy.  No, there are greater issues here, and I am fighting with the last bit of my strength and will to help you see it... to try and save the most precious thing I've ever known, before it is thrown away completely.  The greatest tragedy, would be to know that this could have been the greatest time of your life, that you had the one man who would die for you, only to toss him away.  And for what?  Right.  When you look at what you have said to me, from the very beginning...and how every single one of those promises and statements were then twisted, or outright contradicted - these are not good signs.  They are not 'growth' or 'change' - they are signs that something deeper is wrong.  I've never done anything to you that deserves this kind of behavior.  I gave you all my time, all my money, all my affecton and attention.  Not to mention several moaning orgasms every night.  So, no, I don't believe what I am told.  I know there is something else, and I love you enough that I want to see that thing fixed, to see you become what you really should be, and not the thing you've become.  You can be pissed if you want, but I really say these things only because I truly do love you, and I want to see what you already have confessed to, fixed.  You don't see yourself from the outside, but I do, and I care enough that I want to heal those old wounds, the ones you suffered before you met me.
You know we could be amazing together.  You know that I always gave to you and Savannah, every day.  Thowing that away is the saddest thing I can think of, and to hurt me like this, unneccessarily, is downright cruel.  I could never do that to you or anyone else, despite what you may think.  Again, this shows that something has hurt you in the past, and I wish you would let me help you, and us, to be whole again.  I don't know, however, if I'll be around to see it happen.  This entire experience has changed me, and I don't know how much longer I can take the pain of being here.  That I am writing this today is due only to chance - had I the means, I may have just said goodbye last night.  But something is keeping me here a bit longer.  I'd like to think it's because the universe knows how much I love you and want to help you.  If that turns out not to be true, then I will likely have to leave, as I cannot imagine living a life like this.  I shouldn't have to, and I'm tired of having to suffer for no other reason than because I try to do what is right, and with an honest heart.  I needed you more than anything last night, and you turned me away, ignored me, were cruel to me, in ways I could never be to you.  You have treated me that way for years. with bright moments where it's just the opposite.  We both know I'd never treat you that way.  I can't.  You judge me on seeing me, pushing me, to my worst.  I've always judged you by you at your best.  It's still how I see you.
And still I hang on.  I wish you could know my heart, you once said.  Apparently, you've never known or even cared about mine, and that is what love is about.  I knew yours, and I knew it was, and is, wrong.  The one you really need, the one that could be the best for you, is right here, writing this letter.  Get mad if you want, but it is the truth, and has been proven through time.
 I miss you, the real you, and our daughter.  You could make things right, if you have the strength to face the truth.  I want what is best for all of us, for our child to be raised by her natural parents in love.  You seem to always want only what you want, and that saddens me.  You have been so much better than that.  You can still be, but only if you want to stop running and be willing to do what is actually right.  We have both had our pasts wound us, and with each other, we have the best chance of truly healing.  It was one of the many many things we discovered in learning about each other.  If only you could see how well we fit, could fit again.
Even in the face of darkness, I am forever
Your Michael