It feels like there's another person under my skin, a combination of you and me, that's trying to come through, who's trying to be real again.  I feel haunted by the ghost of us. I can't believe that you feel the same otherwise you would be here with me.  You are so much a part of me that I feel like I am dying. But I cannot go back, and I have to go forward.  Even if I have to scrape every memory of you from my mind, I am going to do it.

OK I'm in an emotional loop here, going from sad to angry to numb and then all over again.  How long has it been, 18 years? 18 years of what?  What was I to you, and what were you to me?

Regardless of whatever it was and whatever we had, I do not seem to have anything left for anyone else.

And what is the use of all that, then.  An optimist would say that, having known and understood the depth of this emotion, I should be grateful that I had the chance to experience it.  Another way of looking at it is, I don't see the point.  Maybe it is better not to have known or understood, because now I know what is absent and that knowledge makes the absence and the emptiness that comes with it all the more difficult to bear.

Why did you not choose me?  I am so tired of wondering, am so done with thinking about that.  How I wish I could cycle back to the day before I asked you out for the very first time, and just not take that first step. 

I was a little concerned today that I might run into you, but figured that was unlikely because you don't go to these things, so it was alright.  Over the last couple of days I have gotten a new and helpful perspective on things which has made it easier for me to understand my feelings.  Do you know there is nothing about you that I would want to change, that I would want to criticize?  That everything that you are and do is just fine with me, and I'm not saying that as a teenager or a young person or even an older person but as someone who has known you for a considerable amount of time and I am saying that now, after everything.  I would still not change anything, because I see you as a perfect person.

I just wish you would see me in the same way.  But maybe that should be water under the bridge now.  I found something to read that explained why I feel so hollow and sad, and it also explained that I would eventually feel better which I am looking forward to.  I don't believe everything I read but I would like to believe this, specifically that one day you will be a bittersweet memory and that I will not feel empty anymore.

Given the possibility that you might read this, I feel conflicted about writing freely.  But there is always a chance that you have stopped reading so I write.  The thought resonates in my mind that if you loved me, you would be with me.  And so now I have to find myself somewhere else and with someone else, if that someone comes along.  Nothing about my upbringing and nothing in school has taught me how to deal with this situation, I just have to muddle along even though it is one of the most important things in our lives, to deal with our feelings, and to find someone we would want to spend the rest of our lives with.  I have, but unfortunately you don't feel the same way, so I have to hope the miracle will happen to me twice.  Maybe it won't but at least I will always know how I felt when I was with you.

I will never know how it took me so long to realise, but it just hit me today when I was driving to the office in the morning - you would have left me waiting for you indefinitely?! What if I had never met anyone, never married, never had kids, never fought with you over these choices - I could have been waiting for you in one apartment after another for years without end, always on hold, always hoping and waiting.

You had no plans for me or for us! People who are in love with each other make plans for each other, that include one another, but you had no plans for me!  And you say that you love me?

I think the reason why it took me so long to figure it out is because, essentially, I do not love myself.  Sometimes I don't even like myself.  Don't know why, maybe I am broken and never got fixed, and it's too late in the day to be navel-gazing about this kind of issue anyway.  But if I had a little bit more affection for myself, I would probably have figured it out about 10 years ago and walked away, instead of now.

Of course it hurts like hell to realize that.  I've spent most of my working life dreaming about you, and about us, and now I have to find another way to think, and to feel.  I know you would say you never promised me anything, but it is such a fundamental shock and so much agony to realize that you meant to promise me nothing at all.

If you really loved me, you would never have let me walk away from you, and then remain in a relationship where you don't even know if the other person is entirely faithful to you. 

When you told me that you didn't know if she was entirely faithful to you, even now, yet you choose to stay with her, that was the seed that grew and grew in my mind until I couldn't pretend anymore that you loved me, because if you did you wouldn't stay. 

That's the one fact that I've taken so very long to fully understand. 

It doesn't hurt any less that I've come to a decision, but at least I don't feel so conflicted anymore. 

My mind has taken such a long time to figure out what the problem was. 

When I am with you, I feel so happy but sometimes I feel strangely numb.  I couldn't figure out why.  I still can't, but am guessing that it is because I was trying to hold back how I truly felt about you, to block out the doubts, to avoid thinking at all about what was going on.

I didn't stop seeing you because I wanted to see someone else.  I don't care if I see anyone or not right now.  Frankly, it may be that I am not ready.  I walk around feeling like most of me is missing and maybe it will always be this way but I cannot lie to myself anymore and say that you love me because you don't.  You may think you do, and believe that you do, but you don't.

Nothing said for more than a year but

tonight I just can't seem to move on.  Usually my mind doesn't wander far beyond the kids, sleep, work, and working on my photographs, but tonight I am awake, it's almost midnight and you're stuck in my brain. 

Maybe it's because I went for coffee with my friends and saw a mural, and sat facing it for half an hour or so while my head went off in 10 different directions, all thinking about her.  And how I wish that I could be true to my deepest feelings and intentions and just be with you all the time. 

Instead, I find myself at this age still out there, looking for someone to replace you.  And right now, someone wants to and he is trying his best to fit into this space where you still are, where you remain despite everything that has happened. 

And if I were true to myself, I would want him to take your place.  Because surely this life cannot be about waiting and hoping without end.  But as I have said before, there is a part of me that is not me anymore, that walks with you and has a life with you, and what is left behind has no capacity to develop any feelings for anyone else.

I am completely shit at relationships that do not have you in them.  Which is remarkable considering how many of those I've tried to have.  I have analysed our own relationship to death, but haven't done any work on these others; I know they failed because I couldn't find it in myself to put in the effort.

Today I thought, well what would have happened if he hadn't called again last week after the flowers, and it had been left to me to decide when to get in touch again.  Would I have?  Would I have left it quiet, just carry on day after day and if I don't get in touch, maybe .... I might conceivably have moved on ?  I'm sure if I read through my previous entries, this thought is a constant theme through each one of them.  I don't read through the previous entries for exactly this reason.  I can't bear the crashing realisation that I have been stuck in a loop, continue to be stuck in a loop and yes, I know I am but the self-contempt is difficult to face. 

I still want to live a full life with you.  I still want to have your children.  At least give me one of these, if not both. 

Maybe it's because we see each other more often but it's not so often now that I get all angsty about us and about missing you. When I miss you, it's more as though I'm looking forward to seeing you again, but no longer this gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach, except for today. God I really miss you, and we only just met for coffee. I guess we didn't get to talk much. But as usual I had a good time, just seeing you.

Will you please do something for me? If anything does happen to me, please make sure my kids' custody arrangements go as planned, per my Will? I cannot bear the thought of them growing up poor trailer park trash, smoking, eating badly and drinking coca cola till their teeth turn brown.

You would like my children; one of them looks like me and the other one talks like me. Both of them are pretty well behaved, mostly. And they are extremely affectionate.

I think it was all that talk about my first apartment that got me angsty again. I loved our time there together. But I know it wouldn't have lasted; I just cannot spend my life waiting for you by myself. I always wanted to have kids, and I have loved having my children. Having them in my life makes it easy to be with you and yet not with you. I am perfectly happy with a separation of my time with you and my time with them. I am living a whole life, and at times I do feel like I am almost the person I was meant to be. Although, as you know, not quite the person I was meant to be. How I wish I could live my other life and be with you all the time.

Sometimes I look at wedding photographs (really more as a hobby to improve my photo processing skills) and, having gone through the process of making wedding photographs myself, I know that the couple aren't really as happy as they appear in the shots, that's just posing. And no matter how happy they look, maybe it won't last. I always think that if it was us, I would be that happy, and not just for the sake of the photo. I would be incandescent enough to leave an after-image when the photographer shuts his eyes.

That said, it would be great to have a photograph of you that I could keep. NOT the one taken by Russell though. That man has no talent.