Ex,
As I have said (to so many people) before for some reason and despite everything I do not hate you (yet) and who knows I may never hate you, but there are things that I do hate. Right now one of those things is really bothering me. I hate the fact that I still feel like I have to defend myself to you.
For example, this morning after getting up and getting ready for you to bring my son back from his overnight visit with you I spent about 30 minutes debating whether or not I should quickly run to the grocery store to return a movie that I had rented from Redbox. A perfectly simple and innocent thing to do, but it was a source of debated because I knew that if you happened to get here while I was gone, you arrived at the same time as or just after me that you would be asking where I had been and what I had been doing. I wouldn’t have refused to answer you and would have told you the truth, but know that you would not have believed me and that would have just made me feel more defensive. I debated about whether or not to do something so little and so simple (and something that so many people would never have given a second thought) because I didn’t want to have to deal with defending myself to you and how it would make me feel – again – to do so.
Another example, last night when you picked my son up to spend the night at your apartment last night I decided to run to a craft store a few miles away to exchange some yarn that wasn’t going to work for me. Despite the fact that I got into my car and pulled out of my parking spot immediately after you pulled out of your parking spot you apparently didn’t see me. When you did see me a couple of minutes later a few blocks from my apartment while we were both waiting for a traffic light to change you decided that you were going to call me and first accuse me of following you and when I denied that to be the case to make inappropriate comments about me dating. I told you, in detail, what I was doing and why, even though I knew that I didn’t have to, that it didn’t matter, that you wouldn’t care and that even if you did that you would not believe me.
I could say that I don’t know why I feel so obligated to defend myself, but I think the truth is that (for better or worse) I still care about what you think about me. After so many years it’s not surprising at all that I am unable to just stop caring. I honestly don’t know what else to say and even if I did I am sure that I would be struggling to figure out how to express it. Maybe I should just refuse to answer any questions, no matter how small, unless it is something that you need to know, but I can’t deny the fact that I feel obligated to defend myself to you, sometimes even when you don’t ask.