Day 5

It still hurts, a lot. But, I am starting to breathe again, to get a little perspective. Don't get me wrong - I still want what I want, and maybe thats immature and stupid, but the ONE possible future I could see with him was so good, and so much of our time together has been SO good.... but... I'm trying really hard to release it.

Besides, I want a relationship with him, and I love him - but ultimately? I don't NEED him. Pain is not all bad, and there is some comfort in the rawness of a broken heart. I dont know how to explain it.... but it has something to teach about compassion and resilience.

How I am getting through it right now is by just sitting with the pain. Not fighting it, not feeding it (much) - I think of him evert 25 seconds and each time I think of him, I say "I release you to your highest good",and I try and quash all those stubborn voices.

Also, I am I think getting a little mad, and that helps. Its not right to sleep with someone for a year, and treat them as if they are casual. Its not right to sleep with someone a year - who carefully TOLD you what was going on, and then ask her to stay when you have no intention of something more than casual.

In some ways, I feel I had done the same with Marcello: With one difference. Though I was clear that I did not wish to spend my life with him, I also gave him all the love, attention, respect I could. I made it into a good relationship for both of us.... and when he needed to end it, I was there, every minute, helping him get through it.

I was not asking for the world, and somehow, the whole course of this relationship, I felt ashamed to ask for what I needed. Like somehow, wanting this to be deep, profound, and dependable - to conciously embark on a journey together - was somehow wrong of me, like somehow, I didnt deserve that consideration.

Its totally OK to expect love from someone you've been with a year. Its more than reasonable to expect that when you've been gone, they will pick you up at the airport. Thats what friends do. The man I give my body to was less involved and less intimate with me than just about all of my other friends. It has been other men in my life who have held me when I cried, brought me chicken soup in bed, offered to take my son to school when I had the flu - It has been the other men in my life who have helped me fix broken stuff, and called me just to see how I was doing because they love me and care about me.

I have EVERY RIGHT and every reasonable expectation that the person who shares my bed, with whom I spend all my romantic energy, will be at least as attentive to me as my friends.

And, you know - its sad too, because, every time we began to become a little more intimate, he would pull away and throw another brick on the wall. We are good together, enjoy each other, like each other - and sometimes when he wasnt looking, we were loving each other. But, each person only has the capacity for what they can do.

So, though every time the phone rings, I pray its him - Im trying o let it go. I am trying to release him and this relationship... because, even were we to reconcile, I must have a different relationship with him. More love, less attachment. And, honestly - at this point I don't really hope for much. I think whats done is done and cannot be undone.