Eleven Years

"You foolish boy," she said. "You're just like me.  If you can't have the lover you want, you won't have anyone else."..."After your father died, I lived alone rather than take second best.  I never wanted another man until I saw Tom.  That was eleven years later." She detached her hand from his.  "I'm telling you this for a reason.  It may take eleven years, but you will love some else one day; I promise you."

There is still so much I don't understand right now.  I'll never forgive myself for taking things for granted before.  For being ready to leave because this whole thing just wasn't practical enough for me.  I'll never understand how I underestimated how much I loved you.  I don't think I'll ever be able to stop loving you.  I don't understand how you were never able to forgive me.  You never could do any kind of self-reflection, never could see my side of things.  I cannot comprehend how easily you got over this whole thing.  How you seem so happy now, curled up in the arms of another.  I can't imagine how it isn't killing you to not be with me.  It's killing me.  I can't settle for second-best.  Every time I meet someone else, they're compared to you.  They just don't grab me like you did.  Your love grabbed me from day one, and still hasn't let me go.  I know I shouldn't be acting like the victim here.  I brought this whole thing on myself.  But I still don't understand.  I can't give up.  How did you?  I can't look for love anymore.  You are love.  If I look anywhere else, I don't find it, because it's not you.  So, I'll stop looking.  I'm trying to train my heart to be hard, so that it stops aching for you.  If I could only act as indifferent towards you as you act toward me.  The opposite of love is indifference.  I can't go there.  Honestly, I don't know if we'll ever be able to be friends.  It kills me to lose you.  It kills me to think of a life without you.  But I don't want to be your friend.  If I can't have you all the time, I won't have none at all.  I want to be your lover.  I want you to come back to me, and I want us to work things out, once and for all.  Maybe I'm crazy.  I'm trying to remember all the reasons I was willing to walk away before.  But they just seem so small now, compared to how much I love you.  How much I miss you.  I'm so sorry.  I'm trying to understand why you left me, time after time, when we were trying to work it out.  The truth is, I know you won't ever come back to me.  Not now.  I know you too well.  You've moved on, and you don't come back to something once you've moved on from it.  I'm trying to remember how to live my life without you.  Trying to find happiness again.  No, not happiness actually.  I'm trying to find numbness.  Happiness is much farther away than numbness.  I'm hoping Ellen is right.  I hope that somewhere down the line, maybe several years from now, maybe I'll be able to love like that again.  I hope someday your memory won't cause me to start sobbing.  I hope you're happy, I truly do.  But I can't understand how you're happy without me.