It was the hardest thing I've had to do.  I always thought that... each time.  It was like pulling a bullet out of your own heart, and knowing that the other person was suffering too.   It was knowing that you both would suffer but that sneaking suspicion that your wound would somehow be worse.  It was absolute powerlessness,  and knowing if I gave up it would just be worse for both of us.   Because she wouldn't know that I hadn't forgiven her yet.   For the bullet.  It's a metaphor, but it was something like that.  I'd have changed the outcome if I thought it was possible.  Long-term possible.  These things are so slowly reversed, and I only have control over my side of things.   In the end, it was nothing if not honest.  Things couldn't just stand the way they were.  I can't change a person, not overnight, maybe not ever.  Not if they didn't need to be changed, not if I had no idea how the change would come about.  And certainly not if I thought that I was the one in the way of the change.  That's ego, I know this.  But the mind can't unsee what it already sees.  Everyone around me saying this is what is happening.  This is reality, and it is not likely to change.
It breaks my heart now to think yes,  I was coming back to you, yes, I was feeling love, but that alone may never have been enough.   The more you try to control these things and keep things from happening, the more in tune you are with those circumstances where it seems like they are just going to keep happening.
I loved her.  Again & again, I fell out of love again and again, and each time it broke my heart because you never ever want to tell someone...  you want to push yourself to feel what you know you have felt before.  And so I tried to recapture the feeling I know she had, but I couldn't find it because what if I gave in again, and the same thing happened.  Could I apologize for what I could not find, not like I thought she wanted, not like I thought she deserved?  I only knew that I would expect the same and I floundered for that feeling again, desparate for that feeling again, which when it came felt so sweet, and at last, I could breathe again because all was in sync.
I understand caring and wanting the best for that person, and that never changed.  Never.   I still love her like that.  I'm still full of the memories of the good, the sublime,  the just being.  All of those are good, and I have had that thought that if I could just capture that in a bottle everything would be alright.  But I know that there is a deeper "alright"  available,  She was close many times, some times there,  and I am so happy for her should she find that permanent.  But it is temporary, we have to enjoy it while it lasts.  It slips away, it ebbs, it flows.  I'm glad she found the line at least.  That is the best I could have hoped for.  It's just that I know about the ebbs and flows, that is all.  Sometimes it gets rough, but I have always made it through.  Against the odds.  The odds are normally most of us don't make it.   But you spill your guts to some unknowing stranger whose become your friend, and it's like surgery.  Thank God for putting people in my life.   Thank God for putting her in my life.  I miss her tremendously, not just as a lover but as a great friend.  In the end, I think we did that for each other and I thank her for that.   I know I did what I thought was right because I thought that I was in the way.  And I was in the way, in the sense that it blinds you to what it's doing to you.  You must resuscitate also.  You must breathe.  I still love that person I know is fully her.   I still pray for the wounds-- all the wounds that lead up to where we are now--  to heal and that she rests easier in her own skin.