this is why it hurts

We met when I was in the middle of leaving a relationship and he was in the process of defending himself against the false accusations and charges she had pressed against him in an attempt to ruin his career & his life. He was separated from the woman i know now was his wife, still is. He lived in one town, the same town as me, and she lived in another. He told me he wasn't married, that she was just the mother of a couple of his kids and that he felt obligated to take care of her, for that reason only. He swore to me that he had never made any promises to her, that he had never stood in front of anyone and promised her to be faithful. He said they were not legally married. i believed him. i never set out to be an adulteress. even when he moved her into his tiny apartment i believed him. by then of course it was too late, i was already madly in love with him. I didn't plan on falling in love, it was the last thing i wanted. i remember the day i told him i loved him, he was parked outside my house and i was sitting in the door jam of his car, we were talking and laughing and he looked at me with those deep, incredible eyes and said "I'm going to make you fall in love with me." I said "I already have."

No one had ever made me feel the way he made me feel...still to this day I feel like that same girl when i see him, despite everything we've been through. He is my soul, not just my soul mate, but my soul. He makes me laugh, he has helped me see myself differently, I see the beauty that he has always told me is there. He has allowed me to be who I am, he has never tried to change me. He has never shied away from the love i have to give like so many other men in my life have. The first time he told me he was in love with me, not just I love you, but I am IN Love with you, it didn't surprise me at all, I told him "I know, I've known for along time that you are just as much in love with me as I am with you."

I know that alot of people, my friends & family especially, see him as this asshole who has caused me nothing but pain and heartache and they want nothing more then for me to just turn my back and walk away, get over it, move on, meet someone new (the best way to get over someone to get under someone)...I understand where they are coming from. It's my fault that they see him that way because I have tended to talk about the bad stuff alot; the pain of coming in last place to his wife and family, the loneliness of being in love with someone who is committed to another woman, the separation i feel when i go to family gatherings & special occasions and he isn't there with me, etc. All of those feelings are very true; i have cried alot, so much more then i have ever cried before. But I see now that the reason it hurts so much is because i have never felt so loved before. One man came pretty close, and he too i could see myself with for the rest of my life, but that didn't work out the way I'd hoped either. For the better part of a decade i have felt love, friendship, acceptance, encouragement, & so much more. That is why his choosing to stay married (& after 7 1/2 years i finally got the truth out of him, they ARE legally married, they did get a marriage license, they did say vows to each other; he had maintained his lie about never marrying her for so long but it never felt true to me), for what he says is the sake of the children, instead of leaving her for me hurts so much. If a shadow of doubt ever entered my mind, if i ever for an instant thought, he doesn't love me, he never has...i wouldn't be crying myself to sleep or having to go to the restroom to settle myself down before i fall into hysterical tears at work. If i ever thought that his feelings for me weren't genuine, i guarantee you i would be over him as fast as i could pick dog poop out of my shoe. i love very deeply, but when i realize that someone doesn't love me the way i love them, I'm done. this time i am so far from done that it scares me.

I have told him several times in the last few months to leave me alone as long as he is still married to her. i am weak when it comes to him and i have fallen back into his arms many times since November (that's when i opened Pandora's box for me and for his wife, but she doesn't seem to care that she now knows the truth). I have tried and tried to stay away from him but it is nearly impossible. As i sit here today, i feel like i am dying inside because i haven't heard from him. This was usually our time, the couple of hours we were able to spend together each week uninterrupted. I saw him earlier this week and she called while we were having a perfectly wonderful, funny conversation and it ruined everything for me, for what felt like the final time. i very angrily told him to go home to his wife and leave me alone until he is divorced, that everything is screaming at me the he is doing whatever he can do to salvage what is left of their marriage (despite his arguments to the contrary) and that he is kissing her ass so that she won't leave him (i added, i hope you spend the rest of your life taking care of all of her wants and needs because that's all he seems to care about. i told you i was mad!), and i think he finally listened to me, which makes me hurt even more! i told him how much it hurt every time we are together she has to call, every time he leaves me to go home to her it feels like a part of my heart is being ripped out of my chest (kinda like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, that movie freaks me out!). I feel like that every time i see him and he has to leave, even if its when he just drops by for 5 minutes. he tells me, i am not going home to her, i am going home to my children. ya know, that doesn't comfort me at all. she gets to be in his life everyday, she has his last name, she gets to portray herself as the "Marine Wife" (give me a fucking break, she knows nothing about what its like to be married to someone in the military, he was out of the Corps long before they met. i know more about that being a sister of 4 brothers in the military and now the Mom of a Marine), she gets to see him before she falls asleep every night and she gets to see him every morning when she wakes up, she goes on vacation with him and grocery shopping with him, she has the pleasure of sitting next to him on the couch watching movies...she has everything i have ever dreamed of. he says, yes, but you have my heart. that's really touching but i can't snuggle up to your heart at night.

how am i supposed to let go of the one thing i have wanted in my life more then anything else in this world (my kids don't count in this equation, they are completely an entity all their own and THEY ARE the MOST important things in the world to me, they are what is keeping me alive right now)? how do i let go of this man, the one man besides my dad who has never judged me, never tried to change me, never called me fat or ugly or put conditions on his relationship with me. how i am supposed to accept that despite his being madly in love with me he can't be with me the way he wants to because of his kids (his thought process, not mine!)? he has told me that if the universe were different he and i would be married, he says he has dreamt of us getting married and having the kind of life I have always wanted with him. he says being away from me is the worst thing he has ever felt. yet here i sit, alone. he says he loves me more then he has ever loved any woman, yet here i sit...

this is what i have to figure out. i have to try to find a way to let go. every single day i struggle for a reason to get up, for a reason to go to work, to go work out, to eat, to breath. right now like i said earlier, Kyle & Taylor are that reason. my friends are helping me, god bless them. i don't want people to be afraid for me...somewhere, somehow i still have the tiniest notion that someday this life may be worth all the pain i am going through right now. i am not about to give up, i promise. but i hurt. i will hurt for a long time. i honestly feel like i will never get over him. who knows? i love him and i will forever. maybe someday god, the universe, fate, whatever, will bring a man into my life that is willing to do whatever it takes to keep me. until then, alone i trudge, trying so hard to not think every footstep i hear is his, every car door i hear close is him coming to see me, every motorcycle is him riding up to take me on a cruise thru the mountains, every high & tight i see in the distance is him, every Envoy or Volvo is him, every everything is him........................................................