Dear Papabear,
I don’t know if this is going to end with a question, or if this is just an update on my last letter. I wrote to you before about being in a relationship waiting to hear three life changing words. Well, we made it a year and four months together. The best year of my life. But before I talk about how things ended, I would like to indulge in a bit of reminiscing. From hugs that we both lingered, to kissing him in the spur of the moment, saying goodbye for the first time and being surprised when he kissed me back. We talked everyday, sharing our lives and our troubles. We supported each other from afar, and made each other laugh. I remember us having fun little spats over who wanted to pay for the other more at dinners. We danced together, and the world just fell away; we slept together, and I felt so at home when he started snoring. He came to my house-warming party, where we ended up watching shooting stars just the two of us talking about life and each other. He came to see me whenever he could, and I would teach him little helpful things I picked up when I could. For our anniversary, I gave him little knick knacks from as many countries as I could find. I told him, “I wanted to give you the world, but only so much of it would fit in the bag.” I even found my old “Hit Clip,” the little music player that was the center of conversation of our first date. He gave me all of my favorites: hot chocolate, sweets, a new mug for my collection, and a lion to cuddle when he wasn’t around. My Honeylion. Every step of the way, he knew how much I loved him, and he saw how my love for him grew and grew. But every chance he got he told me it was okay. I saw his actions, and I could tell he was trying to feel the same love I had for him. Even the little moments. In his sleep he would reach up for my hand to hold. I would wait as long as it took. But on May 31 everything came to a head. Several days preceding that, he would seem standoffish to my affection, which wasn’t usual. He would ignore any mention of my names for him, and he wouldn’t reply to messages that seemed too sappy or emotional. He had made mention of needing to talk to me about something, but he never went much deeper until I pulled at the curtain. He said that he still couldn’t develop feelings, and that he never meant to give me false hope that he would. That he only called me Hon and Sweetie because that’s a thing he and his friends do (not that I ever saw with the friends of his I met). He tried to convince me that all of his actions were from a place of friendship and nothing more. But I can’t believe for a second there wasn’t love there. I felt the spark every time I held his hand. He just wanted to nix the relationship and stay friends, to be there for me like family. For me everything started to fall apart. Every memory threatened to tear itself apart. What was real, anymore? What was his intention, and what did I make up? Or was he just lying to me to push me away? When he said "no" to my plea for staying together, I heard every past relationship echo words of not being enough, not being the right fit, and about being a mistake. That I’m the idiot who can’t do anything right; that I lied to myself for a year. The best year of my life was over, just like that. What was the point? I guess I tried to “move on,” but that didn’t do me any good. Everything reminded me of him, every song on the radio, jokes friends told, every smile reminded me of who I wanted to share them with. I had dreams of marrying him, having kids, and growing old together. I would sacrifice anything for him to come back one day. The unbearable silence drove me back to ask him one last time to give US one last chance, that I would always love him if he ever wanted to try again. He treated talking to me like a problem that needed to be solved, but told me I had done nothing wrong. He appreciated how honest I was through it all, but he told me that if I persisted any further he would cut me out of his life. Even if it was another "no," I needed to clear up some of the last communication problems we had. I didn’t want to end on as bad a note. We parted with him saying that he had already moved on and wanted to try things with someone else. He begged me to stay friends. All I could say is that all I ever wanted was for him to be happy. And as much as it hurt me to say, if someone else could make him happy he should pursue that path. As much as he wanted to stay friends, I couldn’t stomach the thought of seeing him with someone else. Him saying “I Love you” to someone else…. I hate it more than anything, but I would rather suffer if it meant that he could be happy. Despite the pain, loving him was the best thing to have ever happened to me. And I still do. I know it would hurt less if I could get him out of my head and out of my heart. But his memory won’t leave. I just see his smiling face stabbing me in the heart. I just nod and say it’ll be okay. If I had a question to ask, it might be "What should I do now/" But I hear enough of that from the few who I have told about the breakup. I just want to end it. I wouldn’t care if I died tomorrow. What I do care about is all the people my death would affect. In a way, they are what’s keeping me going. But that doesn’t fix the glass that’s rattling around on the inside of my chest. The funny thing is that even with all of those broken pieces, I still love my Honeylion, and I would take him back in a second if he chose to try again. Thank you, Papabear, for everything. I guess this was one marathon I couldn’t finish. Sincerely, Rillee Satranack * * * Dear Rillee, What a beautiful, heartfelt letter! As I read of your time together with HL (I'll use this abbreviation for convenience's sake), I could literally feel the love you had/have for him, and I'm very sorry to hear that he could not return that love. Although I feel sad that you have lost him, I feel even sadder for HL, a person who had love--real love--and threw it away. Maybe, one day, he will open his eyes and regret that. Two of the most stressful events in life one can experience are the death of a loved one or the divorce from a loved one; a breakup like yours is pretty much tantamount to the latter, even though it lasted a little over a year. Just because it was fairly brief doesn't mean the pain is not just as tremendous. Neither I nor you, apparently, can understand exactly why HL broke up with you except to say, as you imply, he just didn't love you as much as you loved him. You will find in this life that some people are capable of loving more profoundly and more deeply than others. To my mind, this is a matter of being more spiritually evolved and connected to the universe when your heart is full of love. That is a blessing for you, but also it can be a source of pain because people who feel love more intensely also feel grief more painfully. In this way, you and I are alike. Such pain can be paralyzing, but please do not inflate it to the point where you seriously consider suicide. It sounds like you are, thankfully, considering how such an act would hurt others in your life, and I hope that prevents you from acting further on that impulse. But if the thought occurs again, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK. OK, so suicide is definitely off the table, right? But you still need help looking to the future. How do you deal with this pain? Well, for one thing, we can consider Shakespeare's famous quote: "It is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all." This is very true. There are people on this planet who, unlike you, have never found someone to love in their life, not even for a year or even a few days. It is tragic to say that some people will never get to feel what you did with someone they care about with all their heart. Even though HL has withdrawn from your life, one thing he can't take away from you is the sixteen months you had together. The dinners you shared, the cuddles, the sleeping together, those are now all ingrained in you, they are a part of you. They are a treasure in your heart that you will never lose, and that is a great gift he has given you even if he never says those three little words to you again. My answer to your question "What do I do now?" is, therefore, a two-parter: first, you keep the memory of those sixteen months alive in your heart for all time; secondly, you don't let what happened at the end with HL turn you off the possibility of love in the future. Someone out there, someday, will be extremely lucky if you give them your heart again and show them how love is not a limited resource but, rather, it is an infinite one. You, my furiend, have a huge heart, and if you share it with others you will find happiness again. Promise. Big Bear Hugs, Papabear
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