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 The Journal of Alan Howard

20th January 2001

Ever since getting back from England without Michelle, I've been feeling pretty sad and lonely.  Knowing that the only reason I'm here is because of Michelle makes me sad thinking that she's not here with me.  Sure, she's here, but not with me.  And it's all because of me and my mistakes.

In between the wonderful times we shared together, there was a lot of pain... it was experienced by both of us, for different reasons.  All we used to do though, was reflect the pain off of each other, and have it come back to us.  Having that happen wasn't beneficial to the relationship, and I couldn't go on any more with it.  Both of us had our problems from our past, and together we had those problems hit us in the face.  Trying to deal with each other's problems just made our own worse...  I know Michelle doesn't understand anything about this, and that hurts even more.  She's been living in pain for most of her life, in some form or other, and to her this was just something else to deal with.  But her pain, and my own newly-awakened pain, was something I'd never experienced before, and she couldn't accept that I couldn't deal with it the same way she could.

I bought a book this week called Mars and Venus Starting Over.  It's brilliant.  It's helped me understand more about what she's going through, which is something I've had difficulty doing.  She placed a lot of faith in me and the future we were going to share, and I took it all away from her.  She's destroyed and shattered by this experience.  And what am I, from this experience?

Where once I thought I knew myself, now I know I never did.  I just pretended to.  So now I have to start really learning who I am, and what I want in this world.  Now the real learning starts.  

Thank you Michelle, for everything you gave me, and I'm just sorry that I was never what either of us expected me to be.   :-(

There's so much more I want to say, but I just don't know how to.  Not just to her, but just to say things...  As part of my new-found desire for learning about myself, I'm going to be seeing a counsellor relatively regularly.  I'm hoping that I'll be able to clear out a lot of my blockages through that, and with all the 'homework' that I'll need to be doing.  

I know that I'm going through a grieving process as well...  even though I was the one that ended the relationship.  I also know that a lot of the grief that I have to experience, is yet to be experienced.  I've been holding it in, maintaining my determination to do what I felt was the best thing to do.  I have to find all those emotions inside of me, and let them out; to experience the pain, the anger, the sadness, and the loss.  I need to experience them all, so that I can let them out of my system, and prevent them from holding me back.  And I also know that while I'm doing all of this, I can't get into another relationship again, not until I'm completely satisfied that I know what I want, and I'm not just doing it to get what I never had as a child.

<sigh>

Life is hard, and then it gets harder.  But that's life.  What other way would we be able to learn the most?  The greatest lessons are the ones that cause the most pain.  We just need to make sure we look beyond the pain, and see the light at the end of that tunnel of darkness.

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© 2001 Alan Howard