On winning

I've recently had a pretty good run of things, which is not to say I'm living a perfected life right now. But there's still some security in knowing I'm in a better place than I was this time two months ago.

Empathy comes from the strangest places. Consider: I now think I empathize with Loreli more than I ever could have while we were together or, for that matter, while we were still speaking. She won our breakup, and I'm all but certain now that I've won my breakup with Katie.

What does that mean? I guess it just means being the emotional victor, letting the upward trajectory of a clean and intentioned break elevate you and the rest (re: money, time, projects, socializing, the opposite [or same] sex, etc.) tends to follow along. The winner coasts, the loser sinks. Things equalize over time.

Looking back, I see that there was very little in the structure of my relationship with Katie that was healthy. It was fabulous in our day-to-day interactions, for a time, but the de jure stuff was clingy and needy and pedestal-putting-on and fraught with all kinds of insecurity, jealously, doubt, denial, and the singleminded folly that our love was some kind of panacea to the things we as young adults hadn't made the time to grapple with. So it turned out that she didn't (and doesn't) know what she wants, and I didn't (and don't) feel like any answers were as clean-cut as I desperately wanted them to be. We started running towards something together, but very quickly wound up running from everything including each other. I know a good portion of what I did and didn't do came from love, but so much of it came from fear. And I am under no illusion that Katie wasn't similarly motivated at several crucial junctures including the final one.

So I called it. I identified the foundational weakness for myself and initiated the breakup sequence. Short of forcing the issue through, ahem, involving a third party, I did just what Loreli did when she surely realized the same of our young and naive relationship back in 2004. And she won, and I lost, mostly because I clung onto the shards of hope imbedded in the fragments left at my feet. I guess moving on is the dynamic process I've heard it to be.

And I forgive everyone, though I'm still not sure I have the peace from it all I would consider final. Ah well. Time is the one thing I've got plenty of.