Still processing
There are some days, and they aren't even the ones where I'm clinging to the crumbling walls of the Pit of Ultimate Darkness, where I marvel at the catalog of lost opportunities for me. Years of trying to be something other than I am, failing despite the best of motives. Years of being needlessly hurt over and over and being too wrapped up in everything to consider that this wasn't how things were supposed to be. I hid the pain I was in from everyone, at least in not sharing the extent of it. How could I burden others with it? How could I ask for help when the only defense I knew was in distraction, to forget for a moment the life bleeding out of me? Really that is what happened... The mess she and I had made of each other was killing us both, and neither of us seemed able to stop. I made promises and broke them. I made commitments and failed to keep them. I lied and lied to the point that I forgot what being honest to someone really meant. In my pain and desperation, I did a lot of really awful things and sometimes it spilled out into other parts of my life.
I am not by nature a bad person, tho that is difficult at times to remember. I still get no pleasure or even release from hurting someone, even if I sometimes lash out in frustration it is always regretted, sometimes before the action is complete. This is perhaps the only thing that really saves me from being a complete bastard. I know people who find entertainment in needling others and watching reactions, and I see the problems they have. Good people do bad things because they are sick or desperate, and I was both. It doesn't excuse, I'm still responsible for the actions and the consequences.
Something had to change... and I couldn't wait anymore for someone else to move. It was like waking up after having overslept... a struggle back to consciousness with aching muscles and a headache, but no longer asleep. I needed someone close, someone I trusted. I had friends, those I knew would care, so I started to take off the armor, allow them access to more of my feelings, remove the carefully practiced distance I kept even from myself. I had forgotten what it was like to feel close to someone, to have no secrets, to not be afraid of them all the time. I also forgot why I had kept myself locked away. I forgot that I might fall in love. It had happened before, it will happen again, to say otherwise would be a lie.
By pretending to be someone I am not, despite sincerely wanting to be, I created an environment based on that lie. Everything built upon it was tainted with that falsehood. All the love I could muster would never fix it... because to remove the lie I would have to reveal the truth... and that would have spelled the end. I did not want to give that up. There was and still is a lot of love, history and sweet memories. Perhaps that is selfish. It is almost certainly naive. My attempts to do so just made things worse. If I had known myself better, I would have done things more as I should. If I understood then what I do now, I would have done things differently. I was right to leave, wrong to do so in the way I did.
Both of us have been able to make improvement in ourselves in the time since. It would satisfy my ironic sensibilities if this is what we both needed to become the people we wanted to be for each other. I am in no way burning bridges, but the odds are not in favor of us ever being a couple again, tho friends seems likely.
So that is where my brain is at...