Ending one doesn't hurt as much as ending the other
I thought i was out last time. I wrote about someone here once and left it as a marker of a thing that was short and amazing, but i was out. And life carried on fine for years until life got back to that point where I realized my wife didn't really care about me and I didn't really care about her. I mean, there was still attachment, but the care was lost, the sex was long gone, and I was sick of it.
So I reached out again to the universe to care about someone, with the intention of it being purely emotional bounded by long distance, and by pure luck and accident she appeared to me... the most beautiful face ive ever seen in my life, and the best friend I have ever had, and I knew it so deeply so quickly I changed the rules so that I could see her in person and everything was real.
and for three and a half years it has been the best thing ive ever known. and despite the long distance i saw her more than a dozen times, which were some of the peak moments of my life, and every time a vacation and an escape and something that filled me with joy. the things we pulled off were crazy. the integration into my life on a daily basis. the highs and lows of fights and misunderstanding and bringing it back, that i never even had in my apathetic marriage.
her care wouldnt let me let go of how miserable i was at home, and it was always a topic, and she kept saying i shouldnt live in that. and i started to believe it. she was right. i wasnt invested in it. my wife and i have done the work so many times and it never went anywhere. the more my wife and i learned individually about ourselves the more we knew there was no point in it. so i finally ripped off that band-aid that neither of us were doing before, because i knew the world should be better.
one thing though was, i knew that if i got rid of my miserableness, i would lose this thing I had too, as they were tied to each other to exist. but it just got unbearable to live like i was. so i made the decision with hope and with her full support.
now it feels like the biggest mistake ever. and i dont feel that way because of my now ex (though, changing my life hurts more than i thought, subconscious grief is strange), its because the nature of my relationship with my best friend is changed. theres never been any expectation that she should change her world (and her marriage isn't really bad in the ways mine was) and we specifically talked about how we wouldnt ever want to be married, but the relationship of a single to married apparently isnt fair, and it would chain me down, and like, in my head, i get that, but i just... i cant let go of the person who feels like the best i will ever know in my life. the impossibility of comparison to a relationship living in a bubble that there is really no specific reason it has to end, but needs to end. and i do not want to let go.
i dont want to let it go!
i cry about this one, and not the other. i can't keep stop picturing her moving on because she will, she has to because thinking about me with people upsets her too. and it rips my heart out to think about her seeking things from others -- the things that i am still willing to give all to her. stupid right? im free now. i can end the secrets and the lying and discover myself anew and find that next thing out there that I can't even imagine that is for me, right? like the original woman who came and went that made me think how could this happen again? it happened again, and lasted far longer and thus developed even more. so there's chance right? i keep telling myself that. but i dont believe it. and i dont want to ever top this. i want this. fuck.
we keep talking about a conversion to being more 'just friends' in some way. but i dont know if im really capable of doing that. i thought i could in the past, i told myself that so I could move forward, but i think i might be wrong. maybe it hurts more thinking that she CAN do it and I cant. i always always the more attached and emotional one in this.
i might have to rip off a second band aid, and that will be the one where i truly fall apart, the one where so much in my life reminds me of her. the pain i think people tend to go through in divorce, that my divorce does not have, would leave me broken for a long time. i spent my strength on the first pull, I dont feel i can survive the second...
there's no question here, just sharing to a crowd that can understand... because who else is there to tell? and a warning to everyone to not ever do this thing in the first place. and at the same time -- it was still fucking worth it.