Another Brief Explanation...

Several months ago I wrote a pair of related blog posts about several of my many attempts at a relationship when I was younger. Like so many of us, I ached to be with someone, anyone, whose love would take away what I knew to be the truth about myself. 

These increasingly desperate attempts ended in failure, without exception. I invariably chose poorly, as Release Vol. 1 describes. Or, as in Release Vol. 2, I chose someone who would have been suitable, but wasn't able to return my feelings. My choices as a result of her decision had near-disastrous consequences.

Due to the intensely personal nature of these experiences, I was fairly certain I would not post them to my blog. My therapist, M, without telling me which choice was better, suggested I at least consider posting them. It would be part of the process of letting go of these memories and removing the power they've held over me for far too long.

Ultimately, I decided to post them. If it helped even one person who had gone/was going through something similar, I reasoned, then that alone would be justification enough for making them public.

It turned out to be the correct choice. While it would be an exaggeration to suggest that these posts set the Internet ablaze ;c), it's fair to say that they easily generated the greatest number of comments, both posted and private, of anything I'd written. I was genuinely moved by people's reactions. When I mentioned this to my friend F, he said, in his typically perceptive way, that everyone understands loss, no matter their background.

One commenter in particular (you know who you are :c)) wrote to me privately to express her sympathy and ask if I'd ever had a successful relationship of any sort. 

I replied, truthfully, that I had not. I had been turned down by every single girl I'd ever asked. She then related a story from her life in which she asked someone out successfully… only to never follow up.

And suddenly I realized that, in fact, I actually a similar story in my past, one I had worked extremely hard to forget for nearly half my life.

As I thought about those long-ago events, I was puzzled when memories of a dear friend from my past began to fill my thoughts. I was never interested in her romantically, nor was she interested in me. So what was the connection between these two seemingly unrelated women from my past?

I mentioned this to my therapist, M, at a session shortly after the initial conversation that sparked these thoughts. She suggested that we discuss them in an effort to discover that connection. 

The next two posts are the results of those discussions. 

In the introduction to those two earlier posts, I mentioned that they were the most painful things I had ever written about. And without diminishing their impact on me in the least, the first of the two posts you're about to read was harder on an exponentially greater level. It reached the point that I stopped work on it at the 3/4 point, a period that soon stretched to two weeks. For whatever reason, I was unwilling and/or unable to relive those memories again.

Finally, last night, I recalled the words of a wise friend. Last summer, when I first began this blog, she was kind enough to reach out to me, a total stranger, to offer her support. I told her then that I had several topics I felt I needed to address, but was reluctant to do so. Her advice was simple. Follow your instincts, she said; they'll tell you when it's time.

And she was correct. Last December turned out to be the right time to finally let myself process those incidents. And late last evening turned out to be the right time to go back and relieve events I hadn't allowed myself to think about for half a lifetime.

I feel I must apologize for the extreme length of both pieces. I debated shortening them significantly, but in the end I decided I needed to give these stories enough space to do justice to the two women who are their subjects. I hope I was able to get across at least some measure of what made them so special.

Having finally finished, I have to be honest and admit that I feel no sense of closure, which I did when I completed the posts from last December. At the risk of being melodramatic, these events, particularly those described in the first post, are going to be with me for the rest of my life. It still hurts, and hurts a great deal, to think about them. But whatever healing that might take place can at least begin now. And that will have to suffice.

Thank you in advance for your patience in bearing with me. And thank you for letting me share these stories with you.