Transitions

I know that I should already be sleeping, but at least I'm in bed...Right now the desire to know if the man ever thinks of me at all is stronger than it's been in a very long time. My first time opening facebook up after the site was down earlier this week for the most of the day, the very first image that loaded was a picture of him with a few other former colleagues. I hadn't seen his face in a long time, he definitely looks older, seems like he stopped dying is hair and let all the gray in. Still handsome, but so squarely a stranger. I truly thought we were at least friends at one point, but friends at least respect each other enough to reply and say goodbye. 

I'm annoyed to even be thinking about him because I just finished primping myself for a lovely DC date with Champlain to celebrate our Anniversary. I can hardly believe it has been a year already, and my what a year it has been. It's exciting to share that I get to celebrate something like that after so many years of being alone. I wish I knew there was the potential for him to be it, but right now I'm just so grateful for finally knowing what it's like to have someone who genuinely thinks about what's best for me and follows through.  So much of my life has been nothing but empty words from people who claimed to love me, it has been a really nice change of pace to actually know there's someone I can rely on, instead of always being relied upon. He's really something else, especially since he apparently loves me enough to move into a bigger apartment together with the intent of having enough space for my twin to move in with us. I don't really know many people that would be so willing to do that, but he just knows, understands, and accepts how important my twin is to me.  I haven't lived with a significant other since 2013 and I haven't had a roommate other than Lady in three years. I certainly have a major transition ahead of me, but I'm mostly just so excited.

I hope someday that even seeing the man's face won't cause me to revisit all the familiar thought loops of was it ever love and do I still matter because I'm sick of happy moments in my life being tainted by the most hurtful experience of my life. I once told the man that the experience of him first reaching back out in 2017 before even knowing he was getting divorced had been a net negative for me. It was the easiest way to sum it all up, but now, after two more rounds of his nonsense and a few years of being dead to each other it seems silly to act like it was a close call. The very few positives don't even come close to balancing out the very impactful negatives to my life and all the things I lost because of loving him. I mean I left my job, and when that didn't work, I eventually decided that not only was it good for my career, but great for my mental health to move to a different state in the middle of a pandemic even though I had spent the last 5 years building up quite a community of friends from frisbee and work. Sometimes I think I've forgiven all that has happened, but I still feel so hurt when I think about how he just drifted into radio silence never to acknowledge me again. Most of me wants to believe he knew being dead to each other was the best for us both and he didn't think keeping things amicable would ever result in that, so he had to be cruel to be kind. But it's hard to accept that and so very difficult to understand his choices. I've wondered lately if what I feel for this person is even love, I'm not sure because I no longer have any confidence that I ever knew them, and loving the idea of someone is not the same as loving them, but I know my heart worries about his happiness so that's gotta mean something.