Hi anita,

Thank you so much for your kind words. I am struggling so much. I don’t just miss a lover, I miss my friend. I go between thinking he still loves me and this is a pause to despairing that it’s over and he’s gone for good. I do this all day long. I’m certain our connection was real and I hope he will return when he emerges from survival mode after the papers are signed. I have been putting myself in his shoes and I understand that when he’s not working or with his kids then he is buried in lawyer demands and legal and financial documents. He is in his cave, just treading water, afraid of losing the house his kids call home. But I wonder if he’s capable right now of understanding how I feel being emotionally neglected and discarded? I deeply regret my text. On the other hand, if that was enough to break a 2 year connection then it probably would have been broken eventually anyway. It just hurts. I’m mourning. I miss his smile.

I still have a voicemail on my phone he left just days before our text exchange and the rupture. It is over a minute long and he sounds sad and sedate but very sweet. I miss his voice. Sadly, when things were going better, he was moving forward and talking about a future with me. Then he got served by his ex’s lawyer and the discovery/asset division stage of the divorce caused him to pull back again. But that golden age in our relationship is so bittersweet in my memories. Sorry, I’m rambling. I’m hurting. He needs to clean up his past before he can move forward, I get that. I’m collateral.

I have so much empathy for him and I don’t know if he even has space to think about me.

He and his ex are due to go to trial in late October. If I don’t hear from him before then, I may try to reach out in November. Unless I’ve moved on. I get very attached to people though, and it takes me forever to forget someone I loved.

I appreciate your reassurance that my text came from a human place, not a mean one. Chatgpt keeps telling me not to blame myself either lol. But it did place me in my current heartache and it’s hard not to beat myself up. But it came from honesty too. I could have been more understanding but if he cares for me, he didn’t have to ignore me. It’s a situational mess all around.

I believe he is completely depleted right now and has 0% battery for anything outside his immediate chaos. And that chaos WILL end eventually. And maybe then he’ll miss me. But the months seem so long stretched out in front of me. He’s also a guy who is single task focused, a typical compartmentalizer. He may even mean no harm, and may intend to bring me down from the shelf where he has temporarily placed me, in time. I don’t know, that’s the hard part. He didn’t break up with me, didn’t tell me to leave him be. He just disappeared.

I do have hope. I also have fear.

Anyway, thanks for your compassion, and for listening to me.