pleading my case.

i'm tempted to continue to plead my case to dirk, to jens, to make him understand, but i really should resist that urge. the details are making things worse, not better.

how would i feel being told that i was loved, but that it wasn't enough, because the person had just met someone else who could turn out to be a true soulmate?
i really don't know.

i'm not feeling good. of course not.
i hurt dirk more than i have hurt anyone else in my life. i hurt him more than i ever wanted to hurt him. i love him, in some way, in many ways, and for the past 20 months, i always wanted his best and always looked out for him and always tried to make things right, to make things better.
now, however, i've hurt him terribly, dissapointed him terribly, and there is no way to make things better, no way to make things right, no way to make it look nicer, no nice tagline i can file this under.

i'm the evil one here, no doubt about that.

however, there is one tiny little thing about this, that is making this a bit less awful for me. if only slightly so:
i was honest.

it was the first time that i was honest at the end of a relationship.
in the past, i always cheated. always lied. always caused bad things to happen, so that a fall out would occur.
i think i treated dirk the way i would have wanted to be treated in this worst case scenario of a relationship:
honestly, directly, and after making sure that that other emotion was not just a one day thing.
but then, this kind of thing always sucks, and terribly so.

taking into consideration how much i hurt, me being the evil one, the perpetrator, the one with the jackpot in her other hand, his pain must be nightmarish.

i hope he is cursing me. i hope he is tearing photos apart. i hope he is finding relief in that kind of thing. above all, however, i hope jens is coming down to keep him company.

i very obviously didn't stop caring for dirk at 4pm yesterday afternoon. i care about him, i worry about him, i love him, and not being the person who can help now is weird and saddening and new. obviously.

but it was the right thing to do. as strange as that term is, when that "right thing" hurt someone else so much.
but dirk deserves more than being a second choice. he deserves honesty.

i've tried and failed to explain to him what has changed. and i think it is good that i have failed, because this is a painful truth.

what has changed these past days is not what i feel for dirk. not at all. it has nothing to do with what he perceives as his faults.
what has changed is *me*, and what *i* expect from myself.
what has changed is the level of emotion, of connection, of intensity that i expect from love in my life.

i've always said that i was striving for the big thing, the true thing. but truth be told, i wasn't.
i'd settled with comfortable, and on good days, "comfortable" was fantastic and enjoyable and hiking and climbing and fun and pleasure and snowbaording and making love and on bad days, i'd get frustrated by my love for the mediocre and stevie ray vaughn and argueing about the reason for fire regulations in hotels.
[oh how i wish i was making this up.]

it's hard, letting go of this. very hard.
i already miss the good we had, the unity we had, the fun we had, the rituals, and the few plans that we had. i will miss his family. i will miss his friend jens. but above all, i will miss dirk and his companionship.

ending dirks and my relationship was and is a selfish act
i am doing this for myself, and only for myself. i am doing this to be happier. i am doing this because i think i've found something i didn't even think existed: a male version of myself, my soulmate.
i want to explore this openly, fearlessly and without betraying anyone else.
i want to live up to my own expectations, i want to take risks, i want to be myself.

right now, the new thing feels larger than me, larger than life.
i have never felt anything of this magnitude, never thought it was possible to feel this in the first place. it's more than that the-grass-is-greener-on-the-other-side-stuff. it's more than newrelationshipenergy™. our similarities are mundane and grande and their extend is scaring me shitless.
our 1300 emails could be reduced to the tagline "me, too!!".
it's mindblowing. truly mindblowing.

right now, i am feeling a strange amalgam of emotions.
sadness and happiness and worry and lust and excitement and melancholy and longing.

and i'm deeply sorry for the pain i am causing.
but i have to take my chance.
i absolutely have to.