The country is recovering from news that disappoints many, but I can only seem to keep myself afloat in my own crushing disillusionment.

Returning home last night from another out-of-town trip, I woke this morning to a litany of rights I needed to wrong before I take another trip south. My faults, slights and fuck-ups, both real and perceived, thrown in my face as I try to pick up the pieces of my heart.

I’ve questioned before, and continue to, what I’m doing here.

I wonder if I should just call it, pack up and move out, and once again try to start over.  I feel sick. It’s so much more, it’s all the practical things to think about as well.

When the other party is still hanging on to hurts from 7 years ago, can they ever be forgotten and forgiven? He still holds grudges against family and friends for hurting him, and those are much further in the past. Much of what’s going on now is my fault, but given our circumstances over the last year, I’ve accepted so much without fail because I knew I was more than somewhat in the wrong. I’ve been essentially called a bully, while being told I was isolating him from friends and his family. I’ve questioned if I have been emotionally abusive.

We have been at precarious points. When I first heard he’ll no longer go back to see my family with me; when I felt alone in September as I sat in my father’s ICU room.

Our current status was a mutual decision, but one based on theory and conversations. Neither of us knew what reality would be like, and reality has not necessarily been so kind. But, you can’t use your time machine to go back to before this was all painful and pretend it never happened.

He says it won’t be like it was, he says we can start something new. I have to figure out if that’s a good idea. I have to decide if I want to.

He asked me to please not give up, but I’m losing hope, faster than I care to admit.