still so in love with you

I no longer feel like I'm holding myself together with band-aids and safety pins. Life feels like it's getting the tiniest bit more manageable. An overseas holiday helped. Buying a house and planning some renovations is helping. Any distraction will do.

But in my heart of hearts, each minute of every day, I ache for you, I miss you, I'm so deeply in love with you.

Today my mind is filled with random images of the wedding we never had. Not images of where, when, who or how. Just images of us. Me standing in your arms, looking up at you. You staring in my eyes the way you once used to. Our lips gently touching. Whispering I love you. Blissfully happy.

Desperately sad.

alone with my thoughts

Days have gone by without access to the internet, so I chose not to write, to see if the distance made a difference.

Somehow it did, somehow it didn't. I certainly didn't dwell as much on the fancy ways and words I could use to describe and detail my terribly unique "no-one could possibly understand how I really feel" angst.

Instead I messaged you, a lot. It's starting to feel like a terrible, shameful secret, my inability to_leave_you_alone.

"Hello, my name is Loser and I'm an ex-aholic"!

it's a lie

that it gets easier. It gets less intense. It gets less constant. It gets less devastating. But it doesn't get easier. The loss and longing and hurt and regret and sadness and pain and love and wishing and wanting and shock are all still there, just bubbling away under the surface.

But as time goes on people expect it should get easier and that you shouldn't be stuck or sad or vulnerable. So in that way it gets harder because it's all still there but no-one wants to care anymore.

inevitable

I've lost sight of whether my writing is bringing me closer to letting you go, or if it's just strengthening the cords of my attachment to you and us. Maybe it doesn't matter either way. Maybe the place I'm going to end up is the same, and the way I get there is irrelevant (or at the very least, insignificant).

The inevitability of a life without you is pretty clear. The only thing standing between now and that is time.

dismissed

Today, in the middle of eating dinner, in the middle of a restaurant, in the middle of Asia, I finally got it. 

I've been dismissed. My feelings, my thoughts, my hurt, my heart, dismissed as irrelevant and unworthy.

What I need? Unimportant.

How I feel? Who cares.

I reached out and absolutely no-one was there. Most of all, not you.

if you love something

let it go ...

Let go of the dreaming.
Let go of the hope.
Let go of the wanting.
The desire.
The regret.
Let go of the anger.
Let go of the longing and hurt and sadness.
The hanging on.
Let go of what might have been.


Let it go.

I bought the house

I'm going on a holiday, I have a new house, I'm planning a renovation, I'm living my life. It's a half life, brief moments where I'm kind of OK, kind of living, kind of hopeful about the future, and the rest of the moments where I'm honestly faking it. I'm a fake and a phony and I have nothing to give anyone.

probably

me loving you is irrelevant. Probably the problem is you loving me. Or not loving me.

I love you

I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love youI love you I love you I love you  I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you

But it's not enough for you.

today my heart stopped

I was late home from work and went to the mailbox. It was dark, I sifted through the mail, and my heart truly stopped. There was a letter from you. I've dreamt of getting a letter from you for months. And there it was, and suddenly I didn't want it, because how could it be anything other than terrible news?!

But it wasn't from you. And I was SO relieved.

home

I'm probably going to buy a house tomorrow. In my heart of hearts I see it as our home - you, me, the kids, a stunning view and a huge adventure. I get that it's not our home, and that we won't share this adventure. I wish you knew what you're missing out on. All of our love, all of our dreams, all the magic that we have shared and could share. Everything that is rare and precious is everything we had and that we could have again. We just have to want it enough and be willing to mend our broken pieces. We could have such an amazing life in this amazing place.

It tears me up inside that all my wanting is not enough.

I think I'm going to buy us a home. And then I'll start coming to terms with living there, alone.

yesterday ... today ... tomorrow

Yesterday I was overwhelmed with gratitude for all the lessons I've learnt - through our relationship and since we broke up. And I was full of gratitude for you - all the love you shared with me and the ways in which you taught me to love.  And so I messaged you and shared my gratitude, and I hope somehow it brought some happiness into your day. Everyone likes to be appreciated, right?

Today I had lunch with a lovely, lovely girlfriend who listened to me as I questioned everything about us, everything I've done, everything I could have done differently. She gave me a soft place to fall - the first time anyone has really reached out to me in nearly five months - and I felt so grateful.

Tomorrow I hope to wake up a little bit lighter in my heart than I've been in a long, long time.

the rollercoaster

Your birthday stirred up so many feelings for me. I found myself thinking of you constantly. And messaging you. So full of love, longing, sadness, regret. But I've been through the 'loop-de-loop' and am on the home straight.

I feel a little better. I'm relieved this has passed, again. Until next time ...

do I just lack the will?

I messaged you today. I spent the morning in tears, in bed, struggling to gain some perspective about all things 'life'. I so very nearly resigned. I dug so deeply, as deeply as I had the strength to dig, to calm my mind and imagine how I might get through another day, week, who knows how long, among the vileness that has become work. Because as much as I want to quit and run, my sense of loyalty and responsiblity won't let me. And I thought to myself ... "If I could just still my mind, find some peace". And then I remembered being able to do that is one of your greatest skills. And then I just wanted to talk to you, listen to you, learn from you, be soothed by you. And so I messaged you to say you're amazing and I miss you. And I couldn't help wondering if messaging you was a good thing (for me, or for you), or a bad thing (for me, or for you), or just a thing that happens because I lack the willpower to stop it.

I love you. I miss you. So very, very much.

what could it be ...

that life is trying to tell me with this relentless pain? Why isn't it enough that I've lost you and all of my hope? Why is my life being dismantled piece by piece around me by some dark, mean, mysterious force that seems to hunger for my misery?

I simply do not have the strength to withstand what's happening. I sense, when I have a rare moment of clarity, that there's a symbiotic, almost parasitic relationship between loss and misery, where each feeds on the other until both have spiralled down into an abyss from which I'm almost certain I cannot return.

You were my anchor. Without you I'm adrift and at the mercy of the darkness.

suicide is an option

That's right. The most terrible of taboos but nonetheless here it is. I left work tonight with my spirit in tatters, crushed by thoughtlessness and heartlessness of people who really shouldn't matter. My 'mind' darts around inside my brain, ducking and dodging, an escape artist of Houdini-like talent. Anything to avoid thinking, feeling, facing. Any of it. Work. You. Us. No us. No you. More work. The nothingness in between it all.

Suicide is a definite option. The alternative is writing, writing, writing and hoping it will make a difference, so here I am.

I did what love would do

Today was your birthday. I messaged you - something simple, sweet, from the heart. You didn't respond. No surprise but still it tore at my soul.

Silence is the most awful torture. It leaves me imagining that you think dark, hateful thoughts of me. And maybe you do. Maybe in your mind I'm a monster that must be reviled.

It's time for that old truism, "If you love something, let it go ...".

tomorrow is your birthday

It breaks my heart that I can't be with you, that I can't spoil you - not with material things, but with my love - that I can't show you there are good, kind people in this world who love you very much and who want nothing more than to see you smile. I imagine you feeling alone, unloved, wondering what the hell happened to your life. Wondering why the hell you gave any of it to me ... I mean, look where that got you, right. Maybe you don't feel any of that. Maybe you're just grateful you dodged a bullet - the bullet that is me - as quickly as you did. And maybe tomorrow you'll give thanks for that, for the relief of it. Probably though, you won't think of me at all.

Tomorrow, I know my heart will ache all day. I'll think of you constantly, I'll be terribly lonely, I'll feel regret for any and everything I ever did to hurt you (not that I don't feel that every day), I'll wish, almost desperately, that you would let me make it up to you even in some small way. And in the secret places in my heart that I've been trying so damned hard to lock away, I'll wish I was with you, loving you, being loved by you.

You want me to leave you be. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Every day is a painful, confusing struggle and tomorrow will be one of the hardest. So I have been asking myself, "what would love do?". And finally I have something that feels about as right as anything can feel right now.

Love would wish you happy birthday, because that's what's in my heart, and then love would keep trying (with all its might) to let you go.

not the way that I love you

It's so uncomfortable to say this out loud, but I think I always wanted you more than you wanted me. I remember when we first met, long before I first lost myself in your eyes, and your arms. You could switch off in an instant, and it crushed my heart, stole the breath clean out of me. And on it continued - sometimes small things, sometimes big, but you had the frustrating yet unquestionably admirable ability to just turn off and walk away.

So maybe you never did really love me. Probably you never did. Not the way that I love you, anyway.

you didn't ask me to ...

but I'm waiting for you anyway.

how wonderful

I have been so deeply grateful for work, for the escape it's offered. As the end of each day approaches my insides start to rattle about, angst, sadness, fear, distress, longing, grief, pinging around my torso, escalating, letting me know in the clearest of ways that the night will be lonely and dark and miserable. This is what I come home to each night. And so I try not to come home. I stay at work as late as I can manage, knowing I have to rise the next morning and do it all again. Wondering how I'll do it.

Last night I finished work at a reasonable time, 8-ish, and went for a coffee and chat with a colleague. Time drifted by. Soon it was late, I was home, I stumbled into bed and for the first time in around 130 days, I slept.