“I felt I had been found.”

From the first moment I met him, every part of me was in total denial about the chemical pull that was forcing me to engage more and more with him. I wish I could sit here and tell you that it was something I was totally aware of as it was happening. I wasn’t. Not even in the slightest. But everyone else knew what was happening because my immediate reaction to him was so strong – so polarizing – it could only mean something very dramatic was going to happen between us. It took three weeks. After about three weeks I had this sick feeling in my stomach that I might like this man. I cancelled our second date. I was verbally aggressive with him on the phone. There was a ton of intellectual, snippy, often passive aggressive verbal foreplay. I said things to him in those first few weeks I’ve never said to anyone before – I was honest, if not brutally sincere about my sensitivity. I drew lines in the sand and said ‘Here’s where I am. Here’s where you are. We’re different. We can’t date.’ It was too late. It was too late after the first second our eyes met.

At week five I was completely enamored. Emotional earthquakes were taking place inside of me. We spent the next two weeks completely obsessed with each other, and then at week eight it was over. He checked out. And I was still so checked in. Week nine, we got back together, but he had one foot out the door still. Then, at week thirteen, he ended it again. We stopped talking. A few months later, we reconnected and then disconnected again. Two months later, the same. Three months later, more reconnection. And then after two and a half months of what felt like the beginning of the beginning again, he checked out. The feelings didn’t check out though. The feelings stayed with me.

In the gaps between our reconnections I attempted to date other men. I attempted to stay busy. And then my life exploded – career madness, extreme personal losses, and just an overall feeling that I had lost total direction of where I was headed. And yet, the sound of this man’s voice still echoed in my head. I couldn’t seem to make it leave. In a moment of crisis, I reached out to him for some words of advice, which he gave and it helped me out. It was the only small island of comfort I had in a 4 month long ocean of loneliness. Something about being with him grounded me. I’d never felt that feeling from any other man I’ve ever loved other than my father. It’s the sort of thing I couldn’t ignore. So, even though I knew that it was over, and that it would remain that way indefinitely, some part of me held on to hope that perhaps we’d reconnect again at some point, once we both knew we wanted the same thing. And then two weeks ago, I saw a picture of him on an acquaintances’ facebook page. They were dating.

I walked into the secret library of my mind, followed the path down a hidden corridor, found a key to a room, and with a sledgehammer in hand I destroyed every beautiful memory I ever created with him. There it was at my feet: The debris of what could have been. I blocked him. I blocked her. I spent two weeks completely catatonic. It wasn’t that he was dating someone. It was that he was dating someone that I knew – someone I never thought he had anything in common with… someone I could never have seen him with. Looking at the destruction around me, I had to face the truth about myself. I am an extremely possessive, passionate, and fiercely loyal person who will throw the most dramatic tantrum imaginable when I don’t get what I want. And I’ll do it all in my head. I’ll express it to no one. He’ll never know. No one will.

And then for the past four days or so I've felt really weird. I've felt like I've lost something. And if I look down to my own hands, I can see what it is. I realized it this morning. I've let go of his hand. I've let go of him. I've released it. It’s over. He’s gone. And I’m okay. I had some shame about how long it’s taken me to let him go, but I’m not frivolous about the men I love. I’m not frivolous about imagining futures with people. It was a death — a profound death – one that for me merited a very long grieving process.

I don’t know what’s next for me. I feel the absence of the energetic grip I've held onto his hand. It’s weird being able to listen to music and not have to change the song because it used to remind me of him. Everything is changing I guess. I’ll sit with it some more and see how I feel.

I still haven’t made total sense over how this happened, or why it all even happened. I can tell you that it sucked. And that it was also the most incredible and intense collection of experiences I've ever had with anyone in my life. It will take some time but I’m able now, at bare minimum, to appreciate the beauty of the mess I've just turned around to look at. I was madly in love with an emotionally unavailable man for the better part of 17 months. It completely snuck up on me and I didn't want it to happen at all. It might be both the best and worst thing that has ever happened to me.