For those of you who don’t want to read a deeply personal blog, skip this one.  I have only one topic on my mind and it’s something that can’t be written without using the pronoun “I” far too often.

My partner in life, Cristy, has decided to leave me.  It’s a trial “temporary” thing for now, to give her some space, but I have to regard it as permanent.  If there’s any chance left, and I’m not sure there is, it’s going to involve resetting our lives completely.

This space has been filled with musings on many subjects over the years, ranging from the art of writing to politics to economics to the spiritual mysteries of the universe.  One topic that has never made it has been relationships.  The reason for this is simple:  I’m just about the last person in the world to give out advice on that topic.  But I’ll do it now:

Never take anyone for granted.

There’s a terrible downside to believing that you can think your way out of any situation which is the hard truth that not everything can be thunk its way out of.  This is my biggest challenge in life for a lot of obvious reasons.  It hits very hard when it becomes obvious that someone as beautiful and intelligent as Cristy, who once wanted to share her life with me, decides that it just can’t be that way anymore.  All I can do now is confess my sins for catharsis and hope that it helps someone else who is in need a little bit.

Outside of a prison, people rarely regret what they have done – it’s what we haven’t done that hangs over our lives in a cloud of regret.

How many times did I worry about my own problems rather than share them with her?  How many times did I not bring her flowers, even when I thought of it?  How many times did I fail to tell her how beautiful she is and tell her how much I appreciated her?   The list could go on for hours.  You don’t want to hear it.

Relationships seem to trip up a lot of people, which is very sad because there is nothing more wonderful than sharing your life with someone.  I can only think of a few people I’ve known who were diminished by giving themselves to others, and all of those were people who were only too giving.  Really giving can’t be done in spurts, either – it’s a full time gig that requires constant, unflinching desire.

I’m a difficult person to deal with and relationships are especially hard for me.  I’m prone to depression, and my inability to find constant work has weighed heavily on me for some time.  It was always my problem and one that I had to fix, yes, but it became our problem when I couldn’t turn off the worry and deep feeling that I am inadequate.  I should have realized that the best way I could be useful to the world was right in front of me, every day.  Telling Cristy how I felt about her even as I came to depend on her so much was the smallest gratitude that would have made it all much easier – especially now.

My excuse has always been the same throughout my life – a darker side that has a broad imagination and prefers to stand a bit too far back and watch from a distance.  It might be the source of great art if I let it run loose, but I don’t even have the guts to do that.  Somewhere between being lucky enough to have wonderful people share part of my life through friendship or a committed partnership and losing them to death or distance or those dark clouds of undone, emotional distance just brings out the worst in me.  I don’t even know where it comes from or why it happens – it just does.

But it caused me to lose Cristy.  The pain of this moment is caused by so many smaller pains that went by easily as tiny moments of not doing.  I slouched my way to this moment in the same way I criticize our broader society for falling into an unthinking trap of our own making.  That makes me a hypocrite, but that’s far from the worst of my sins.  Not showing that I care is by far a worse way of not living up to what I say than any intellectual argument undone by its own action.

Take from this what you can.  Please.  I’d like to think that there’s a chance something decent can come from this empty, hollow feeling.