Now you tell me, after five years of waiting and hoping, five years which made me question everything. Five years of hurt, self-doubt, endless tears and heart ache.

I gave you my body, my heart, my soul. I sacrificed time with friends, time with my kids, time for me. I looked deep into your eyes for even a speck of the love I craved, but it never came.

For years I waited, hoped, wished, but it never came. “Forget him, move on, find someone who really cares,” inner and outer voices told me. But no, I carried on hoping; feeling that nothing, no one, could match up to you and the feelings you ignited in me.

You were my world and every decision I made – what I said, wrote, planned, dreamed – was for you or because of you. I was utterly, hopelessly under your spell.

Yet still, you were indifferent. You left it to me to contact you, you never even told me you liked me, or held my hand in the street, never called me your lover or girlfriend. Everything we did was down to me. Weeks, even months, could have passed before you contacted me.

And now the spell is broken. I am bled dry of love for you.

All these years of digging for the treasure of your heart have exhausted me, left the soil dry, empty, spent. I have finally accepted that the inner and outer voices were right. Only now I ask myself why I defied them for so long, for years of my life which I will never get back; years of my life when I could have been happy with someone else.

I am finally moving on, planning a brighter future, without the second-guessing, endless waiting and pain you caused. There is someone else who cares for me, who wants me, whose heart is open. It is early yet, so the buds are only just starting to form, but I can finally smile with true hope.

YET NOW YOU TELL ME YOU LOVE ME. After all this time, all this hurt, now you tell me. It is too late. You bled me dry, used all I had for you. You say love is an infinite resource. Not so when you rip out someone’s heart and stamp on it. You cannot fix it, but someone else may have a chance to help me grow a new one. I cannot and will not go back.

I wish you well, but please do not tell me you love me.