The email came around 10PM, so yeah I guess it's possible he was drunk. Okay so a little vent.

I have never really understood guy. We met at work when I was younger, and for the first approx 18 months we were together, everything was really awesome. We clicked really well in a lot of ways and I formed a lot of wonderful memories with him during that time. We were like comrades, best friends and lovers all rolled into one. I really loved him really badly and so it was really confusing and terrible when things suddenly took a nosedive halfway through the relationship. He started withdrawing a lot, became randomly mean (like really mean), ran hot and cold, etc. We started fighting more and more and the fights got worse and worse, and most of the time in the end I didn't even understand what we were really fighting about. It was like he kept going back and forth between hating me but also times when things were normal and good again.

I read a lot of material on what it's like to date a narcissist or sociopath, and it was confusing because some of his behaviors really fit what was described, but some stuff didn't fit. Like we were great together for the first 1.5 years. Plus every time I would be like well maybe this isn't working and we should break up, he would get really upset and even cry and act like he didn't understand what was wrong, either. But it just kept getting worse and worse, and then as the grand finale he cheated on me with one of my coworkers. They officially became a couple about a week after we broke up, after a 3 year relationship. So much drama and weirdness.

Now over the past 4 years he has dated several other women. He tries to talk to me once in a great while, we have a little bit of platonic chat and then he falls off the grid again and I shrug it off. I've always assumed it's because he's in between girlfriends or something and maybe looking for a little pick-me-up after a breakup. It's whatevs because I don't hate him and still have an inkling of sentiment, so I don't mind briefly validating for him once in a blue moon that he's not a total piece of trash after he's had a rough spell in his life, like the time he wanted to talk after he got fired from a good job. Etc. But we haven't been actual "friends" this whole time, never hang out, rarely talk, etc.

So it's just kind of surprising and random to me, a little irritating even, that he has apparently been holding onto these little mementos like love notes for over half a decade. And now it's like he wants to make sure I know about it. It's just like omg dude if you really did care for me then you should have acted like it a long-@ss time ago.