Well hopefully you're too busy to read this for some time, so I have a chance to calm down.

Every guy I've dated since W was an attempt to meet someone else, and get over you. Every. single. guy. Some had a vague resemblance to you, some didn't, I was trying to recreate lightning in a bottle of course and these things don't ever work out like one intends. I remember sitting in a bar by myself after my friend had left, just wanting to be alone and yet not alone, hoping for a miracle of sorts to happen right there.... and then it did. Kind of. This guy sitting right next to me could probably smell the despair and asked me what was the problem. I told him, yeah. I'm engaged to someone but I think I'm still holding out for someone else. Who's already married, and I don't think he feels the same about me.

He said, first thing. I'm just waiting here for my wife to finish her girl's night out, then I pick her up. Second thing, you really have a lot of thinking to do. If you marry this guy, just hope and pray the guy you're holding out for never comes looking for you. Third thing, I didn't love my wife when I married her, and I still don't, but we have a daughter and she means everything to me. I hope and pray every day that I never ever meet my soulmate, the one woman I'm going to fall in love with, because now it's too late. Anyway, I gotta go. My wife's ready to leave. Good luck.

So I finished my drink and left, a few months later I ended the engagement. Then promptly tried to recreate lightning in a bottle all over again, this time on the Internet, with the results we now see.

My husband wants us to move away from here, live in another country. I've been pushing it off. I know the only way I can ever move on is if I never see you again. Maybe I'll even be happy, after a while. Each time something happens and we stop talking or seeing each other, I'm all in pieces for a few months, then I start getting better, or maybe I just forget how bad I felt and I stop thinking about you every day. The worst is when I'm on the way home or on the way to work, when my mind wanders. It heads straight for you. Sometimes it feels like there's something crawling under my skin trying to get out, it gets so bad.

You say we should live for the present and for what time we can spend together but it just makes me crave for more and the craving and wanting and not having is ten times worse than the despair of actually knowing that I've lost you. It's the absence of hope that makes bearing easier. I know you don't make any promises, but I still have this horrible lingering hope that we will someday be more than this. Sometimes I think too much about it and it all comes spilling out in my dreams.

At times like this I feel so alone. There's no one I can talk to about how I feel. Who could understand? Why should they?

I can understand your perspective on this - what cannot be changed must be tolerated. I try, but sometimes it is difficult to keep everything inside.

I suspect I've been a little bit vague since receiving your little note 2 days ago. My mind has wandered off somewhere and expects me to follow, but here I am sitting at the keyboard wondering what's going on. It's like a phase shift has occurred, somewhere deep within, I'm here but I'm not here, I'm thinking about you all the time and distracted as all hell. I'm at home, watching TV or eating dinner or doing something completely mundane, but all I can really think about is what you are doing this very minute. The best part of me is out there, floating around somewhere and living another life.

The terrifying part I think is still to come, when that same part of me that's floating in euphoria comes to the realisation that, uh, nothing's going to change. We're still not going to be together. We're still married to other people and that's the way it's going to stay. I'm still not going home to you, not today, not tomorrow, not ever. Your life will never be my life. Your children will never be my children. We have no future, only a ghost of a present and a very well remembered, well treasured past.

Why should I cry for you?
Dark angels follow me
Over a godless sea
Mountains of endless falling,
For all my days remaining

What would be true?
Sometimes I see your face,
The stars seem to lose their place
Why must I think of you?
Why must I?
Why should I?
Why should I cry for you?
Why would you want me to?
And what would it mean to say,
That, "I loved you in my fashion"?

The right thing

So following on from our conversation yesterday, I thought about it further and realised well hell I have been doing 'the right thing' all along. Contrary to my belief that I have spent most of the last decade or so traipsing along the path of the non-righteous, I have actually been much more straight-laced it surprises me.

Let's see now.

I stayed with Wk even though it didn't feel good anymore because we'd invested 5 years together and I thought he was going to propose. So to dump him unceremoniously like I'd have had to at that time would have been the wrong thing. Road splits into a fork, I take the high road and fall off.

You said you were going away. I had a lot of views about that, and plenty to say, but said nothing. Because you were already going to leave with her. She had quit her job, packed her stuff, got her ticket. So it would have been wrong for me to step in at that point. Another fork in the road.

Friend told me you were staying together but not married. Again, wanted to say something or write or ask her to pass on a message, but felt it would have been inappropriate for me to step in since you were clearly happy and settled.

Ta Da!

We live our lives doing the right thing, most of the time, and live to regret it. Frankly, I don't think we're beyond doing something about it. It's just inertia and fear of the unknown that keeps us in place. So hell yeah, if I had the opportunity to live my life, at least partially, in the way I would've wanted to, then I will.