Can't

I get it. I know the right thing to do is to just drop it. Smoosh those feelings down deep inside of me, somehow find strength that has eluded me for more than a year now and move past it. You aren't available to me. I'm not available to you. Those are facts that will likely never change. I need to forget it and get back to my old life.

But I… just can't. Every time I start to realize that it's never to be, the pain is unbearable. I don't even want to go on… because what's even the point? Thank god for my kids… I know I have to be here for them, so I will be, but… for everyone else I've become an empty shell. I have nothing left to offer. I am, at best, a mirror, reflecting their feelings back to them so they can be happy even as I am not.

Meanwhile, you're just there, just out of reach. I think maybe you know, I sometimes think maybe you're going through this same pain. But I also think maybe I've become delusional. I think maybe I want you so very badly I've started grasping at straws. Seeing ghosts of you in other peoples' stories. Finding connections that I am so sure of, but which are clearly just the inventions of desperation. Reading things into your posts that just aren't there (hah, I've been doing that for a long time, at least since you gave away those hearts… Everlong. None of them anything to do with me).

God this thing has gotten so out of hand. I was recently visiting with my mom and I wanted to tell her about you so much. Show her pictures of you. Show you off. As if I had any right to show you off. As if you're truly anything to me but a slightly-friendlier-than-normal neighbor. “Hopefully you'll get to meet her soon, Mom. Maybe she'll even join us for one of these family campouts one day.” God, I am so lost. Your new profile pic really is beautiful, you know. Just as your husband said.

I don't even know what this letter is, where I'm going with it. A step on the path to letting you go? A desperate plea for you to just… come to me? I don't know what I'm doing anymore. The universe, once so ordered for me, has stopped making sense. I need to stop doing this to myself… to you… But I also need to see that smile, over your shoulder… Those eyes, peering into my soul… I need to feel your touch… and I'm so, so afraid that I just… can't.