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Dear Friend

I pondered whether to write this blog post. But here goes...
Dear Friend,
Once upon a time, what seems a lifetime ago, you and I had something special. We were young and life was wrapped in fun and laughter. You used to hold my hand and kiss me and whisper in my ear, "I love you".  And everytime you did, I was bewildered as to why. Why would you want me? Why love me? I never felt worthy of you, low self esteem and no confidence can do that to a young girl. You were my shiny thing which I loved and adored, like a trophy I held so tightly and declared to the world you were mine and I yours. You were but a spark I could never contain and I knew we were never meant for forever. I broke my own heart with my insecurities and wrote the obituary to our bond in a moment of careless stupidity. You broke me with your silence. The demise of us taught me a valuable lesson about loyalty. It is something that has stayed with me all this time. So when I heard your voice, the same one that use to whisper love in my ear, all these years later, it was like an echo in time, a memory calling from the past. Time gone, but still the moments live on, like a quantum ripple through space and time, somehow impacting my present and future. I still think the world of you, special humans stay with us, even if it is just in our minds. I am not sure why you decided to speak to me all these years later. Maybe just to reminisce, maybe to show concern for my current mental health crisis, maybe ulterior motives. I don't really know. And it doesn't matter. The memory of us, was not only a valuable lesson in loyalty, but it was also a lesson in love. Adoration of shiny things you don't think you deserve, a trophy of love, is doomed for failure. You would have always fallen off the pedestal I placed you on. Perhaps in a way you're still there. But I am older and wiser now. Cheeky smiles and cleverly woven bullshit are fun, but they can't catch me when I fall. And this year I fell spectacularly and it was my partner of 21 years that caught me. The times where I felt like my mind was lost to me in a sea of madness, he was my anchor. He has been able to hold an enormous amount of emotional space for me, in the wake of this crisis. He sucks at the day to day stuff, he is the first one to admit it. He can be inconsistent and easily distracted and works to his own time. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to state that I have spent much of our 21 years together in frustration. But when the shit hit the fan, he was what kept me going. I can be a neurotic human on a good day, let alone a full mental health breakdown. He puts up with my nagging, my complaining (which can mostly be about him), my moodiness, my melancholy. He has seen it all and he is still here, loving me even more everyday.
No one could have held me and supported me the way he has and still is since my brain went pear shaped. There have been times I thought it would be easier to leave, when things got tough and my frustrations overflow. Love was never meant to be easy, but it is worth all the hardship. You see when he tells me he loves me, I feel it in my bones, in my soul, in a place that's not of this world and it makes me feel secure and safe. He feels like home, he is my home. This is something I never had with you, because I was always waiting for the moment you would fly away. Our love was spontaneous combustion, it self destructed the first chance it got. Walking down memory lane with you was beneficial though, it reminded me of the girl I once was and more importantly made me see the value in the woman I have become. Thank you for that. You probably won't read this and I doubt I will hear from you again, but my mind has been having a conversation with you for weeks and I needed to write it down, and so here it is. That young teenage girl will always love you, in the way young girls do, but it will be in a memory, locked in time and this woman I am now will always remember you fondly. You gifted me with another lesson recently and I am thankful for that. It has made me even more grateful for my family and the immeasurable value of the love of a wonderful man.
I wish you love and joy and peace. And I hope you find what you're searching for my friend.




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