The Day is approaching.

[Pseudonym]

Recently I moved from a comfortable, albeit ratty, suburb of a major city, to the middle of bum fuk nowhere, surrounded by religious nuts, and the biggest rednecks you can find. Why did I do this? To be with a girl who cheated on me. I don't regret it, I love her more than anything. She is the girl I've always wanted, like me, but the total opposite of me. She's everything that I'm not. And I love that.

My girlfriend and I have never been happier. Yeah, there is tension and lost trust in the relationship, but we are getting along. We actually want to see each other, and miss each other every day. I find myself falling back in love with her every afternoon that I spend with her between classes. I rest better when she is around, and I'm in a better mood when I wake up to her. There is something about waking up to a beautiful woman that cannot be replaced. I'm getting attached to her again, and I am to believe her, she is reciprocating that attachment.

The problem is not the cheating, the problem is not the attachment. The problem is that in less than a month she is going to be leaving here and going to Europe. She told me I could not follow her from the beginning. This is her dream, and I dare not stand in the way. But I still don't want her to go. So she will go to Europe, and I'll move back home with my friends and family and pick up life there.

As for our relationship? We started out in a long distance relationship... neither of us want that again. We loved each other, but made each other miserable. The distance wasn't much of a help either... So we decided that for all intensive purposes when she leaves, our relationship ends. Neither of us want that, but neither of us want the long distance relationship either. That is the best decision that we know of. But in the end she's leaving... and I don't know what to do. I've never felt so powerless. The woman I love is walking out of my life... And I can do nothing about it.

Please Understand, I know this is not the end of the world. It is sad, but life will go on with out her. It does because it has to. I will work, both on myself and at my occupation, and she will fulfill her dream of being in Europe. I understand all this, but it still does not make it easier.

I want her to stay, and I'm not shy on telling her that. When she apologizes for leaving, I make sure to tell her "Sometimes you have to pick between what you really want now, and what you've wanted your entire life." This is my way of telling her that by following her dreams, she is making the right decision... but it still hurts. I want her to stay so bad... She's the only person in the world I allow myself to become emotional around. I hate emotions, they get in the way of logic and reason. But I understand that they come with the territory of being human. So I release them. There is nothing sadder than crying alone, there is not a time in which I feel more alone. And without her, I feel alone all the time. This isn't just self pity, I know this from experience... Before her, I was always alone, even in a crowded room, surrounded by my friends, I was alone. I hate being alone...

I don't know how I'm going to take it when she goes... I keep telling my friends in a jesting manner that I'm going to drink until I can't feel feelings anymore... not the healthiest coping mechanism, though I am considering it. Everything is going to remind me of her... I am gnostalgic, so I attach memories to everything... everything will remind me. My computer, we met online, the radio, we a lot of songs, video games, some of our funnest times were playing them. Name it, it will probably remind me of her.

But time will pass, and my memories will be fewer, and that will make me sadder. Because as painful as they are to have, my memories of her I can most accurately say were the best moments of my life. Dancing at my brothers wedding, our first date, our second time having sex (first time sucked), the list goes on. I don't think I knew happiness before her... I'm a miserable person, satisfied with being content. Happiness was just out of the question.

But again... I guess I'll just have to get through it. Wake up in the morning, put my pants on one leg at a time, and face the world. That's what life's about.

- Anonymous.

[Mark]

I can't add much that you've not already said, but I can tell you that I've lived through similar grieving/loss situations in my own life, some very painful, and that they are *very painful* for a while, and then the pain does fade. And after a long while you find yourself remembering that thing and it strikes you that you haven't been thinking about it for a while and that seems weird but okay. It is weird to wake up finding yourself having transmuted into someone new and older with different attachments. I think the first time you go through it is the weirdest because when you are young and inexpereinced, you think that change represents "selling out" - at least I did. But then you get older and change just happens and its not so much selling out as just adapting to things as they change around you. When you've lived through this process a few times you are comforted during the time of pain with the knowledge that the pain will end. but that doesn't stop the process from being very painful. It's a cliche but it is true (like most cliches) - better to have loved and lost than to have not loved at all. Which is another way of saying that your tag line (about the "unexamined life not being worth living" has its own flip side which is that

"the unlived life is often not worth examining". :cool: