Dear Lisa,

It’s been almost one and a half years since we were a couple, and still you refuse to return what is rightfully mine. Items that belonged to me long before I knew your name are still in your possession and you cling to them like a fisherman who caught the biggest fish in the sea, and no matter what I do, whether it be asking you nicely, or taking legal action – you refuse to return the items that defined who I am over twenty seven years for reasons which you consider justified as I hopelessly fight for their return.

If there is one question that has boggled my mind throughout this endless struggle it’s why – Why would you do this? Why continue to hold on to possessions that do not belong to you? Is it because we are no longer together? Is it because I left? Is it because you feel justified in the fact that I have to live without my belongings because you have to live without me? – I guess I’ll never know.

More than wanting the answers to the questions that I ask of myself – I desire the answers to the questions that I ask of you – does it make you feel better that you did what you did? Do you feel vindicated that you have taken my entire life’s acquisitions away from me? Does the fact that I no longer live with the things I collected throughout the course of my life make you feel better that you are living without me? Again, these are questions I will never know the answers to.

From the day you kissed me for the very first time when I came to your house that day, our relationship had more downs then ups – pardon the pun. But somehow, we always found a reason to stick it out. While you still loved Tom and I still loved Rose, we found a reason to love each other despite the fact that we each loved and longed for someone else. Granted, they got in the way many times, but no matter what, we always found a reason to forgive – if not forget.

For two years we did this. We loved each other and hated each other at the same time. We laughed and lied and loved and lived two years of a relationship that was filled with more bad times then good, but somehow, whenever we were ready to give up for good – we always managed to find the love that was there and try once again to make our love work – even if deep down we knew that it wouldn’t.

When we met, I was going through such emotional turmoil that I wasn’t ready to love you – yet I did. I tried my best to do what was right and treat you the way a girlfriend should be treated – and you tried your best to love me as much as you could – but Tom and Rose were too much for either of us to handle. You tried to hide me – hide me from Tom and from the heart that still loved him – and I tried to hide my feelings for Rose – a woman that I now know was nothing more then a woman who paid attention to me when my own wife treated me like a stranger – a “rebound” if you will. Sure, I know that four years later – but try telling me that in 1997. And you, still in love with a man who was a part of your life for over seven years – a man who’s name you took even though you were not married – the love we had for them was written across our hearts so clearly that I’m surprised we had enough room to love each other – but somehow – we did.

Even after we were apart for a whole summer, and even though you knew that I had God knows how many girls in my house – and my bed – over that summer and even though you had created such a strong bond with John that he asked you to marry him – we still managed to put that all behind us and try once again to love one another.

I can still remember the joy in your face when I came over your house and you awaited my answer to your request to get back together – instead of the answer you expected – I gave you a card that said, “Let’s try again” – an answer you did not expect – but deep in your heart you wanted to hear.

While we were apart, the only thing that mattered to me was my friends and my homebar – and despite that – I threw that all away to try again with you despite the tainted past we had and the pleas from my friends and family to change my mind – I thought what I was doing was the right thing – I felt it in my heart.

So I threw my friends, my homebar and my apartment away – everything that meant the world to me while we were apart and moved in with you – because I thought that you and I deserved one more chance – no matter how tainted our past was.

When we lived together – I tried my best to be the person I should have been the first time we declared our love for each other. Even though I had no job, I provided whatever my unemployment offered – which was more than enough to pay the rent and then some, while making sure you came home to a clean house and a cooked meal every day, not because you were working and I wasn’t – but because I wanted to. Even when I got my job at the DOB and had to wait out the screening period, I continued to do what I was doing because, although I had a job, I was still at home until my first day on the job – so until my first day at work, I tended to the house so you didn’t have to – because I thought it was the right thing to do.

But it seemed that no matter what we did, how hard we tried – and no matter how much we loved each other – we still had suspicions of each other that carried over from the last time we were a couple. I’m not saying it wasn’t justified on both parts, I’m simply saying that it was a shame. Despite your love for me, your harbored anger and resentment clouded and overtook the love you had toward me so much that my every move was questioned, every action looked at with doubt – every good intention taken with an ulterior motive – there was none – I loved you.

And even when, towards the end of our relationship, we were fighting more then we were not, I still believed that somehow, everything was ok.

While you were at work, I would tell Doug of our constant bickering and fighting. I remember one day, he told me that I should take all of my belongings and bring them to his house so they would be safe. He said that if I decided to leave you, I wouldn’t have time to grab everything that was important to me – so I should be prepared for the inevitable. “No thanks,” I said. “Everything will work out,” I told him. “Besides, even if we did break up, she would never keep my stuff from me.”

If only I had taken Doug’s advice.

So a year and a half later, I am still trying with no success to reclaim the same items that Doug predicted you would keep from me. I have to say that I never thought Doug would be right. No matter what we did to each other from that first day you kissed me, I never would have kept your life’s acquisitions from you – and being someone who believes in Karma and its reciprocal effects – I never thought you would either – but I guess life’s lessons are taught the hard way.

So here we are, ten months since I came to your house and packed up what you had of mine under the false pretense that you would allow me to return with a truck that Saturday to collect what was rightfully mine. And despite false promises, charades and outright contempt for the Law – I am still without everything I walked into that relationship with – simply because I walked out of the relationship with you.

I’ll admit one thing to you – without feeling the need to hold this back from you – that you knew exactly what to do to me to hurt me the most. I mean, being in my life for a total of two years, you knew how much I valued my stuff – and how much I loved my father. So when you realized that I no longer wanted to be with you – you decided that since I took my love from you – you would take what I valued the most away from me. I guess to you – that made sense.

Even though it’s almost two years later, you still find it necessary to keep those things from me – so I have decided to let you.

If you refuse to give back what is rightfully mine – then I will give myself back what has been missing from my life for the past two years – a life without you.

Despite the fact that we are no longer a couple, you are still in my life. I still wonder where my stuff is and what, if anything, you did with it. I mean, after all, over the past year, you told me that my stuff was in storage, thrown away, “safe and in fine condition”, given to the Salvation Army, in your friends garage, still in your house, and so many other places that I will never know where it actually is – so I have decided to stop wondering. I mean, what’s the point? You have a judgement of $3,000 against you – and you still won’t return my stuff – so if a court order won’t work – what will my hope do? – nothing.

So I have decided to return something to myself since you won’t return anything to me – and that something is my life, my freedom – and my future.

If you feel the need to hold on to everything I accumulated before and during my relationship with you – go ahead. All that will do is give me more room to fill with items I acquire after you. If you feel that keeping my stuff from me is your vindication for keeping my love from you – that’s fine – because thanks to you, I learned that material possessions, no matter how unique, can either be replaced or remembered. And if you feel that living with the things that were mine is your way of enacting revenge – your wrong – because no matter how many times you tuck yourself into the bed that my mother spent her money on – I will never be there to read you to sleep in it. No matter how many meals you eat on my dishes – it will never be a meal that I cooked with my love – and no matter how many items of mine you destroy – it will be one more missing item that I will have to recreate with the woman who has truly taught me what love is. The woman that has had to put up with a year of what you have tried so desperately to put me through – and the whole time stayed right by my side and given me unconditional support and love. The woman that has spent time, effort – and money replacing all that you have taken from me in both a physical and emotional sense despite the bent up anger and frustration I have allowed myself to manifest against her and the rest of the world – well no more.

If you won’t give me what you have taken from me – then I will give Sandy what I have taken from her for the past year – a life without you.

So even though you have made an intense effort to cause me grief and pain over the last year, I will not do the same to you. Instead, I will wish for you a happy life, because as you once said, “what goes around comes around”. I hope that someday, you will find the true definition of love that Sandy and I have found in each other – and when you do – you might be able to let go of me as I have now let go of you.

Take care Lisa – and good bye – for good.