Goodbye My Lover

Sometimes I am haunted by my thoughts- unable to shake them. This was the case last night as my Ipod shuffled onto James Blunt's "Goodbye My Lover".

"You touched my heart you touched my soul. You changed my life and all my goals. And love is blind and that I knew when, My heart was blinded by you. I've kissed your lips and held your hand. Shared your dreams and shared your bed. I know you well, I know your smell. I've been addicted to you. Goodbye my lover. Goodbye my friend. You have been the one. You have been the one for me."

Instantly I was back in that moment years ago & I thought I had resolved it.

Damn You James Blunt!

We met a few weeks after I had begun counseling at college. I was having a rough time and needed to get some feelings worked out, but soon I couldn't bare my counseling sessions. I didn't want to talk about the negative- I just wanted to feel what I was feeling.... so I quit going and maybe I shouldn't have, but I couldn't help it - I liked how I felt so elated and happy!

Over the next year our lives intertwined. I had never before felt what it was like to be so a part of someone else's existence. To the extent that it was our life together - seamless. I had loved before, but in retrospect I did eventually figure out I wasn't loved in return. When he said he just wasn't ready to have a wife I knew I had truly been loved and that it was over. It's hard to say that and know it's true. We had never talked about marriage, but apparently he had thought about it. I had no say and no choice in the matter.

Why do men think that it makes it any better to say how much you've meant to them, how much you've changed their life and how much a better person they've become because of you? Is it a line...... like in those movies "It's not you, it's me"? I thought for so long that it might be.

He said he learned how to truly love someone because of me, but I find no comfort in that. I think it's torturous to know that his profoundly improved self will eventually go on to love another woman and be the father to her children- be her husband. I didn't know the extent of what I had until it was over. It's a beautifully tragic thing to experience- tragic only because it did end.

Who said "It's better to have loved and lost then to never have loved at all"? I think this is so profoundly a heap of crap. I don't feel better off. I felt and am reminded again that my heart is forever stained and any future love- if I am so lucky- will receive this stained heart of mine. Who would want that?

"I'm so hallow baby, I'm so hallow" another line that rings so true for me today.