Moving On From Unrequited Love

I'm not going to get into too much background detail here. We all have our own stories when it comes to unrequited love; mine, well, I will simply never be able to convey exactly what it means to me in writing. I'm great at conveying my feelings through my art and writing, but here is where I simply cannot do it any justice. I have been in love for the last three years. It may or may not have been returned at first; I guess I'll never know that for sure. What I do know is that, even if it ever did, his love no longer belongs to me. Quite frankly, I don't really deserve it, nor do I want it. We could never truly be compatible with one another; we simply want different things out of our lives.

But that doesn't stop me from feeling it, I suppose, because I have been hung up on this person for the last three years. I have actually tried to get over him. I've dated, but those relationships have failed. I am dedicated to this one person, only allowing my heart to be half-dedicated to the others. It wasn't fair to them, and it wasn't helping me move on. I've friended this person, I've cut them out for months at a time, I've distanced myself, and I've stepped closer.

At first, around the time that I may have lost him, I was preoccupied with the reason why. I kept trying to get inside of his head, see it his way, blame myself, try to fix myself. Much of my own personal growth over the last few years has been inspired by the loss of him, how keenly I felt it, and how eager I was to "fix" things to maybe gain it back. I don't regret the progress that I've made with myself, even if, in retrospect, it was all for the wrong reasons. I've grown quite a bit from the period of time that this boy entered my life, which was probably the worst possible time for him to do so. Looking back now, I can see that I was not merely depressed; I was at a point of a psychotic break. I had literally been driven crazy by trauma. I was depressed to the point of being delusional. It was messy.

Well, you can see how that may have caused a big problem with any relationships I had tried to maintain at the time. I fucked up. I lost a lot. From a psychiatric perspective, I suppose one could say that it wasn't my fault. But that still won't stop me from feeling that it was. Even now, when I recognise that I shouldn't feel that way, (after all, I've overcome the shame and guilt and blame I placed on myself when I was raped) I still do. It's something that I have yet to grow into. I did, after all, cause a lot of pain from my actions. I feel like I was not in complete control of myself then, but I also feel like I indulged in that behaviour a little too readily.

So, for a long time, I have been blaming myself and trying to fix the "reason" and the "problems". I suppose the more 'general' population can relate to this in that, well, things broke off before you were ready for them to go, for a rather vague reason, leaving one unsatisfied and unable to really move on with their life. Where the other person is grasping at straws trying to find any other excuse other than the unsatisfying, "I just don't feel the same", while you are looking for every hole in every excuse to try and argue your way back in.

I've come to realise that the reasons... they just do not matter. Now that I am healthier, I can see the situation more clearly now. It doesn't matter what his reasons were for not loving me, and it doesn't matter that I made any effort to fix that. However, that doesn't make it hurt any less for me... It's an unhealthy trend that I see in unrequited love; on the one hand, we have the person trying hard to not give such an impersonal excuse as 'I just don't feel the same', and so giving every other excuse in the book, and on the other hand we have the other person looking for every way in all those imaginary excuses to hang on to that person. Him and I were involved a lot longer than we should have been, simply because I could not accept his excuses, and I manipulated the situation in a way where he could not untangle himself from the excuses and avoid hurting me. I was wrong to weave that web of manipulation. I wasn't even fully aware that I was BEING manipulative... All that I could think about was assessing the problem I was given and doing everything in my power to fix it.

But that wasn't the point of being given the problem in the first place.... because in reality, he simply did not want to be with me any longer, and no amount of persuasion was going to change that. I realise that now. Perhaps he even said so. It just didn't get through to me. You cannot make someone stay with you if they don't want to; any excuse to keep them by you is selfish, and our friendship has suffered for it. And it's not love. The truth is, I could have done everything right by this boy (which I definitely didn't do), and he may still have left me. In fact, if he hadn't ended it when he had, all that really would have done was postpone it anyway, because there have been situations since then that he would not have stuck by. In a way it's almost a relief; had he left me during the more recent situations, it probably would have further devastated the delicate friendship that we have now.

I have to accept that he knows what is best for him, and that there may not be any other reason for it other than I am not the person he is meant to be with right now. Or ever. Definitely ever. It doesn't mean he doesn't care about me, that there was a reason or that I could have prevented or fixed it. I suppose that's just how feelings work.

Yes, I miss him tremendously. Even though I've come to realise this, it still doesn't seem to make it any easier in getting over him. I've given myself all the tools for moving on, all but time. I have spent so much time bettering my health for him that I have lost track of what really should be important to me, for me. Much of my efforts have been directed towards fixing the problem between him and I, or at least fixing the problem with me so that it won't happen again with anyone else down the road. Now I see how narrow-minded I have been. In spending so much time trying to fix myself as a problem, I have neglected to give myself time to move on from the past. There really isn't any way to just let this go; it has to happen on its own, I suppose. I just wish there as an off switch for the hurt. I need to, and I WANT to let him go. But it's never as simple as that.

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I'm not really sure where to go from here. I feel like, as long as there is such a lack of communication between him and I like there is right now, that I will always feel that drive to 'read' into him and 'fix' things. I can say that his leaving doesn't mean he doesn't care, but in reality, I just don't know that any more. It's just not communicated to me. So I guess I'll always feel that insecurity. That I'm not doing enough, though I'm running myself into the ground. I am an intelligent woman, but he doesn't make me feel that way. I am beautiful, but I don't feel beautiful when I talk to him. Really, I feel inadequate, and guilty, and not me.
Perhaps, in that, we are simply incompatible as friends. Maybe most of that is all on me. But I can't help but feel like not all of it is.

This boy is very, very precious to me. He holds a place rooted deep in my heart for attempting to protect me three years ago, and I will always feel a tenderness for him. But I really need to move on with my life, and in order to do that I can't continue things as they are right now. Things need to change, acknowledgements need to be made, communication needs to commence, or I need to detach myself completely. I feel so anxious around him because I have no feel for him any more; I can't reach him, he is cold, and I have no idea of what value I am to him as a friend. I have no idea if he values me at all, if it would make any difference if I was around or not, just as the friends that we are now. I feel like I am hanging on because I just don't know. I am in the dark.

Well, now I'm just... indulging again. The fact is, is that if it were any other person, I would have picked up and left by now. I'm just wondering if maybe such a course of action is overdue. Maybe it's the only way I can achieve a sort of peace.
Maybe this friendship is just like the relationship. I should stop looking for a reason, and stop trying to fix it.
Or maybe doing so will just hurt this more.

Something that is still unresolved.
I just had to get it out.