Understanding just hit me like a drunk trucker's punch. For the two years that we struggled to form a meaningful connection, for all the months of dry-humping and being evasive and going out with "friends"—during that time, you were practicing with me so you could get your act together to be with him. Three little words that I always thought were a cliché are now mine to say: You used me.

And I took it. Because you're glorious and I had the vanity to think I'd be the one to finally earn your trust. You were saving yourself, though, for him.

I hope it works out. Thing is, that guy was willing to fuck you after you broke up with him and then wait for you to come back. I'll bet the romantic in you calls that eternal love. It's not—it's lack of self-esteem.

The punch line to this two-years-in-the-making joke: I love you. Because I know you, a richly complete human being, fabulous and faulty. I see you. I see a woman fighting her horridly unfair past who now moves through the world like a goddess of creation and destruction, spreading beauty with one hand and devastation with the other. I send a prayer not to you, but to all the ever-hopefuls in your orbit, all the men who never hear no and never hear yes. Good luck, guys.

—Anonymous