I feel super guilty for cheating on you. I can’t tell you why I did it. If I knew, I wouldn’t be so plagued with guilt. As much as I hated you throughout our relationship, I know that I loved you more than I’ve ever loved a person on this earth before.

We met almost exactly a year ago; it was the day before I left for spring break. You were LITERALLY the hottest guy I had ever seen in my life; I was hypnotized by you. I couldn’t stop talking about you that night to my friends. So, basically, I’ve thought about you everyday for a full calendar year.

I look back at last spring as the happiest time of my life. I loved my friends, I loved myself, and I loved you. All of those things have changed over the course of this year. I still love my friends, but it’s not like it was last spring. We used to be together all the time, but now we don’t live together and one of us is abroad. I absolutely hate myself. I think I look like garbage and as hard as I try to feel better about myself nothing works. I want to die. And we’re not together anymore (obviously). And honestly the worst thing about that is that it is literally my fault.

I wonder all the time if we would still be together if I hadn’t cheated on you. There is no way to ever find the answer to that question because I did cheat on you. This is literally the first time in my life where I’ve faced real and lasting consequences for my actions. Up until this point I did whatever I wanted and generally got away with it.

One of the hardest things I’ve come to realize over the course of this year is that you can’t undo something that’s been done no matter how badly you feel. X says I’m supposed to learn from my mistakes. The obvious lesson is: don’t cheat on your boyfriend. But there seems to be a larger lesson as well; I need to learn to think about the consequences of my actions in general. I need to learn that some decisions don’t affect only me. I didn’t know how badly this would hurt you, and to be honest I still don’t know how badly this hurt you. You won’t even talk to me.

Thank you for teaching me what it feels like to really love another human being. I believe one day I can feel that way again, but first, I have to learn to love myself, and who knows how long that will take.