TheEndComplete

At first, I stayed away because I had to. Then, I stayed away because it was the right thing to do. Now, nearly four years on, I stay away because I don't know what to say. I still love you.

It's been a while. A good long while. Two and a half years since we last exchanged so much as an email, and over three since we've spoken. I remember the exact day for each; you know how good my memory can be. I know I asked you to stay away, and you are only respecting my wishes, though in reality I'd love to hear from you at this point. Oh well, I know that one day I will reach out to you again. You were a huge part of my life and we were together for a long time; I know that I won't go to my grave without speaking to you again. I have gotten some Christmas cards from your mother over the years, and I've replied, so I guess we communicate indirectly. I actually respond to your mom's Christmas cards knowing that you'll see my handwriting and hold the card in your hands. I write them for you. Needless to say, I still think of you. Every day, if I'm honest with myself. It's not really painful in the way it used to be in the year following the breakup. I know that it had to be this way, that we just weren't working as we were back then. I still think of all the powerful experiences we shared together, for which I will always be grateful. I really do hope you're well, and I want you to know that you have a place in my heart that no one will ever be able to reach. Life goes on as it must, but I've stopped expecting that one day all thoughts of you will be extinguished. I wouldn't want that anyway. I still love and miss you. I'm sure you know this unspoken truth.

Seems like a thousand years since we broke the ties... Is your new life as fantastically wonderful as you thought it would be? I mean, you have everything you ever wanted, right? You certainly have everything you put the most effort into during our relationship. Namely, a life back in your Midwestern Homeland. Now you can be stuck on your codependent family and dysfunctional friends all you want. Remember that you need them and their drama more than they need you. You really were never working towards a shared vision of "our" life. It was always your vision of life, and I could choose to board that train or not. From the moment we moved in together, that train was ultimately going to leave the station whether I was on board or not. Which is why it didn't work. I would've moved with you if you had demonstrated some small desire to step up to the plate and actually participate in our relationship rather than sleep it away, pining for the Homeland. There was never an "us." Not in ten and a half years. Remember that in your lonely moments, when you don't have someone (friends, codependent family or some online dating chucklehead) to distract you. By the way, are you still in contact with Illinois Boy? You hook up with him again? You never did stop contacting him while we were together, much as I asked. In fact, even when we long distanced, you would tell me that he contacted you. I've always wondered why you would do that? Ten years together and you never broke off contact with some philandering married loser you had a one night tryst with before we met in your self-professed "Dark Times." Why did I put up with three years of long distance relationship AFTER you showed your commitment to our relationship (or lack thereof) by moving out? I'm still trying to figure that one out.

If I could, I would send this song to you. But apart we are, and apart we must remain. I meant what I said when I told you a few weeks ago that I need my space to be respected and that I can't be your friend right now, though I wish it weren't true. I wish I could break down the boundary I reluctantly set and talk to you again. I haven't even heard your voice since last October. So strange, not to hear that voice I was once so familiar with; that midwestern twang that I always thought was cute. I wish things had turned out differently between us, that our hopes for our relationship could have come to fruition. Ten years ago we were just moving in together, and I felt like I had finally found my home and my forever in you. How naive I was, and how quickly those years passed us by. I will love again, but never again with that naive belief in forever. I now know the transitory nature of things. I still miss you every day though it has been almost a year, and I will miss you for years to come even though the raw emotions will one day necessarily fade. [video=youtube;lcPo2yfwQiE] ]

I'm doing okay, keeping busy and do hope that you're well. Glad to hear that your mom is doing well. That said, I have to tell you that despite the fact that it's been almost exactly a year since we last saw each other, it is still much too soon for us to be 'just friends.' I hope that that is possible one day, but right now it is not. I still miss you and what we once had. My emotions are still quite raw, though not as much as before. I wish it was easy for me to let go and move on, that I could just engage in superficial chit-chat with you and be your buddy but I can't. More power to you if you've been able to move on, date other men and generally enjoy your new life. I'm still haunted by the memory of us. The hurt, anger, frustration and sadness that remain within me continue to be dredged up every time I hear from you. I have to ask you why you continue to contact me out of the blue? What are you trying to achieve? If you want to rekindle some kind of post-relationship platonic friendship, it is much too soon. I need more time and you will have to respect that if you value my future friendship. If you miss me, then just come out and say it. If you want some kind of indirect reassurance that everything's okay through casual emails, well, I can't provide that to you because it's not okay. If you're going to contact me, be direct with me and tell me what is on your mind. Here's the thing. Unless you have something meaningful to say to me other than these routine status updates on family, cats, etc., then I have to ask you to respect my request for space. Every time you've broken no contact, you have told me you'd respect it and then you break it again. I know you probably mean well and are just trying to reach out, but it reopens the wound every time. If you're feeling a bit down and are looking for some of my familiar support, then as you've told me before, I can't be your go-to person anymore. Leave me alone and let me heal. You're being selfish, contacting me when you want to. If I contacted you when you didn't want me to, you would tell me we have to maintain boundaries. I guess your boundaries are to be respected while mine are to be broken. P.S. As of last weekend, you're no longer the last woman I've kissed.

You weren't so much a girlfriend as you were a disappointment.

I hate to say it, but your net impact on my life was negative. I have paid dearly for those wonderful experiences when we first met back in '01 and '02. What was intense and beautiful to start with quickly devolved into slow rejection. You were pushing me away from the moment you moved in with me. No matter how many dinners I took you to, no matter how many bed and breakfasts, no matter how much patience I had with your depression, health and libido, nothing made any difference. You came into my life only to leave me.

One of my biggest regrets is that I never told you how truly angry I was with you.

I'm really ready to be done thinking about you and processing all this. I loved you once, and deeply at that, but can't afford to expend either emotion or thought on you anymore. I've got to let this broken clock wind down.

[video=youtube;DWlhbKk-1gA] ] I can't stop my mind from doing prison time. -Colin Hay I guess I'm running out of words, or maybe I'm just finally beginning to let go. Songs are all that come to mind now. I don't really have much to say that hasn't been said before. Colin's playing in your town next week. I'm sure you know that. Either you're going, or, as you said to me last fall when he played out here and I thought of going, perhaps his melancholy acoustic songs aren't the best thing to be listening to right now. In my heart, I hope that his music is still too emotionally loaded for you. Who knows? You've been dating for months now so maybe you're "over it." Are you going? If you are, I have a hard time imagining you could go without thinking of me in some respect, since I introduced you to his music. Remember the time we went to see him in the city and laughed at his wife's interpretative dance during the performance of "Down Under?" It's hard to believe that was way back in 2007. Harder still to believe that we attended that show only a few months before you moved away, and that we long distanced for three and a half years after you left. I don't say this in anger, so don't take it the wrong way, but I should have let you go for good then. Ultimately, other places and people were more important to you than I was. You wanted to go back to where you came from. I do kind of wish you didn't have to come out here so you could find out that all you really wanted was to go home. I do wonder how you're doing at times, and ultimately wish you well but the memory of our time is getting increasingly distant. Sometimes it feels like it was fictional. I still feel angry, sad, frustrated and betrayed in turn at times. By your own admission I saw you at your worst, and I am still a bit bitter that I stood by you through all those years of struggle and someone else is getting the new, healthier, thinner you. That you go out and do things that you never did with me. But overall, I'm letting go. Ten and a half years is a long time, and it takes a while from my heart to untangle all the knots tied over that time. Maybe you started dating because you had let go a long time before we actually broke up, or maybe it was because you just needed to fill the void. It doesn't really matter now. In the end, when I'm healed, I will be glad that we had our time together. Writing here is, in a way, my last connection to you, and if I am to truly move on, I'll have to let that go one of these days as well. All I really want now is peace.

I still love you and miss you, though I am trying hard to move on. By move on, I mean be reasonably satisfied in and of myself. I am in no hurry to rush out and find someone new. I still have to be alone with my feelings for you and give them their due respect for however long it takes. Letting go of my feelings for you after all this time is proving difficult, and my mind is cruelly teasing me with visions of futures-that-should-have-been-but-weren't. I hope you still think of me. In fact, I hope you're lying awake thinking of me now. I will always wish that we could have found a way to share a vision for the future.

I will never regret a moment I spent with you. Every single one was worth it. One day the pain of losing "us" will dissipate and when that day comes, I'll be glad I have my memories of you.

Four years ago today you moved out. December 15th will always be the coldest day of the year to me regardless of temperature. It was that day that our relationship officially died, although we kept it on long distance life support for another three and a half years. You know, the sad thing about that day was that we replicated the one moment from our early long distance phase in which you left at the crack of dawn, leaving the bed still warm but leaving me with the knowledge that this time you were never coming back. It was that day that I knew friends, family and homeland all were more important to you than I would ever be. I should have let the relationship die then and there, but I didn't and now I'm dealing with residual pain from four years ago. You assured me that I was never competing with your family for your affections, but the truth is that I was whether or not you choose to see it that way. And I lost. You have every right to live the life you want. I just wish that you didn't have to move in with me and become an integral part of my life to discover that all you really wanted out of life was to be back where you began. You left your imprint on my life, things that I enjoyed before you, so now I am constantly haunted by your ghost, much as I try to force it to fade. You can convince yourself that it is sheer force of will that allows you to move forward, but the reality is, I've been in your apartment once this summer. You've been in mine for five years. I'm still finding little artifacts with your name on them. I have carried alot of guilt for many years, feeling that I let you down because I couldn't move to your home state and I do appreciate that you relocated to be with me. However, I'm not going to carry that guilt anymore, because I've come to the realization that you share significant responsibility in the failure of our relationship. If you put HALF the effort into trying to embrace our life that you put into pushing for the move "back home," perhaps we would still be together. Ultimately, you showed me for years that I was second priority by looking to the door and constantly pressuring me to move. Much of my hesitation to move came from the fact that you really made it very clear that relocating "back home" was all about your needs. I didn't really factor in, and how true that has proven to be. Some day I will genuinely wish you well, but not today. Today is, I hope, the last day I sink into sadness. I hope that on the 16th, my new life will begin and your ghost will fade and leave me in peace to allow me to find the happiness that I sadly realize now that we were never meant to find together.

It saddens me that over the course of ten years we went from "Keep On Lovin' You" to "Time For Me To Fly" on the REO Speedwagon Scale.

I'm sorry I didn't respond to your email. I hope you understand. It's not because I don't want to communicate with you...I do. Not a day goes by when I don't want to call you, to hear your voice, share my day with you or hear your opinion on my artwork. There have been many times when I've entered your phone number into my phone, all except the last digit. I think to myself, "all I have to do is press that last number and OK and then I can talk to her." It's so difficult for me to not hear your voice, not share my life with you. I miss "us" and how we were at our best. I miss watching the idiosyncratic "classic" films while snuggled on the couch. I miss you terribly and still love you deeply. You said you understood and would give me the time and space I needed to heal. I hope you meant that and understand.