She's still in love with me...as am I with her. in She tripped, and I was lost at sea.

…Tonight, over drinks at a bar, I admitted to her, “This wouldn’t hurt so much if I wasn’t still in love with you.” She looked at me, with that goofy, “why the hell are you pulling this out of me, goddamnit?” look, smacking her fist down questionably. I inquired…I had to, “what?” What is it? What do you want to say?”

“I’m still in love with you, too.”

I know she is…I knew she was, when she told me a month and a week ago that she didn’t want to be with me anymore. That she was not, in fact, in love with me after 9 plus years together. That, she found a simpler life, something less draining, more like her life prior to us in the aspect of a calmer world, not like the Portland I dragged her to (so she says, even though she fell in love in 2008 and wanted to move here, and begged me to move us here for years after)…because, being with a woman 13 years her junior (while I am 9 years her Senior) is simpler, easier, more life affirming.

I see.

Yes, I see.

Yet, tonight, you admitted - you are Still In Love With Me.

It’s okay, I’m still in love with you.

If you love someone, set them free. If they come back, remind them that they left to better their lives, and ask them if they did so - and be supportive no matter the response, but never give up the new life you were given when they left. Just remember, as she’s told me a handful of times, “we are born alone, we die alone, what we have inbetween is all we have together.” Make your choices wisely, my friends, as those are limited.