I am not losing my best friend.
I have been trying to write this for some time now. It's really hard.
It could be harder; it could be worse.
It's really hard.
Audra is a love of my life. We've been a couple for five years or more, and her bettering influence on me has been immeasurable since the day we first spoke.
We have been such good friends. We are such good friends. If I tried to write out for you all of the things that I've learned from her, and that we've learned together, about being good to a person you care about, it would take me another month to write what I'm trying to write, and I haven't got that kind of time.
We began in a rough patch. We found smooth places, and spent time together in them. I don't know that we ever made the right sequence of decisions when it came to coming together, but we knew once we did that it was amazing.
I can't say that it has ever stopped being amazing.
But it has stopped.
She began her new job in Toronto this week; the one that she's perfect for. She moves into her new apartment in Toronto with our two cats at the beginning of August. I am not moving to Toronto. I am staying in Ottawa for the indefinite future. We are parting. We are becoming apart. We will not be together.
We are best friends. Maybe we have not been together. Our good and close friends will ask us, independently of one another, what happened and we will try to explain or change the subject. If we try to explain, we will have slightly or very different answers. One thing about giving up is no longer having to eventually both see it all the same way.
This is not giving up! I am NOT losing my best friend!
I can't be partners with my partner. It didn't work. It worked and worked and so did we and even though we still did, it didn't. It's not a total mystery, but it's not whatever you're thinking it is. It's something older than that, and it's some other things, and some of them are as old as either of us.
I feel terrible about it. I won't put on a brave face; or rather, I will, and here it is: my brave face is crumpled and crying.
But it isn't something that's being done to me. Audra isn't leaving me. Audra is going where she needs to be, and I'm not. I'm not leaving her either. We are parting ways, as a couple.
I am not losing my best friend.
We will still laugh and talk and share things. We will still know the other is so good. We will still need contact and we will keep in touch and visit when we get a chance, we will still hug so tight and kiss. We love one another and the god damn thing about it is that hasn't changed at all.
We aren't angry. We spent a lot of time taking turns at being angry; very sloppily, the turns got all mixed up sometimes and we never figured out who should have felt what and when, but we don't have to anymore. One thing about giving up. We don't need to be angry anymore. We can jump straight into the sense of loss.
I'm going to live in Ottawa, and Audra will live in Toronto, and we will not be having a long-distance romantic relationship. We have somehow wriggled unhappily out of our romantic relationship, all cold and missing it, but we tried to get back in and we can't and it's too sad to just stay where it was.
I don't like this feeling at all.
I feel like I'm losing my best friend.
It could be harder; it could be worse.
It's really hard.
Audra is a love of my life. We've been a couple for five years or more, and her bettering influence on me has been immeasurable since the day we first spoke.
We have been such good friends. We are such good friends. If I tried to write out for you all of the things that I've learned from her, and that we've learned together, about being good to a person you care about, it would take me another month to write what I'm trying to write, and I haven't got that kind of time.
We began in a rough patch. We found smooth places, and spent time together in them. I don't know that we ever made the right sequence of decisions when it came to coming together, but we knew once we did that it was amazing.
I can't say that it has ever stopped being amazing.
But it has stopped.
She began her new job in Toronto this week; the one that she's perfect for. She moves into her new apartment in Toronto with our two cats at the beginning of August. I am not moving to Toronto. I am staying in Ottawa for the indefinite future. We are parting. We are becoming apart. We will not be together.
We are best friends. Maybe we have not been together. Our good and close friends will ask us, independently of one another, what happened and we will try to explain or change the subject. If we try to explain, we will have slightly or very different answers. One thing about giving up is no longer having to eventually both see it all the same way.
This is not giving up! I am NOT losing my best friend!
I can't be partners with my partner. It didn't work. It worked and worked and so did we and even though we still did, it didn't. It's not a total mystery, but it's not whatever you're thinking it is. It's something older than that, and it's some other things, and some of them are as old as either of us.
I feel terrible about it. I won't put on a brave face; or rather, I will, and here it is: my brave face is crumpled and crying.
But it isn't something that's being done to me. Audra isn't leaving me. Audra is going where she needs to be, and I'm not. I'm not leaving her either. We are parting ways, as a couple.
I am not losing my best friend.
We will still laugh and talk and share things. We will still know the other is so good. We will still need contact and we will keep in touch and visit when we get a chance, we will still hug so tight and kiss. We love one another and the god damn thing about it is that hasn't changed at all.
We aren't angry. We spent a lot of time taking turns at being angry; very sloppily, the turns got all mixed up sometimes and we never figured out who should have felt what and when, but we don't have to anymore. One thing about giving up. We don't need to be angry anymore. We can jump straight into the sense of loss.
I'm going to live in Ottawa, and Audra will live in Toronto, and we will not be having a long-distance romantic relationship. We have somehow wriggled unhappily out of our romantic relationship, all cold and missing it, but we tried to get back in and we can't and it's too sad to just stay where it was.
I don't like this feeling at all.
I feel like I'm losing my best friend.