Well over a month ago now, a relationship that I'd been in for nearly a year and a half ended. It was the most involved relationship that I'd ever been in during the course of my 25 years on this planet. Writing down that statement not only makes me feel happy, but very very sad as well. On one side, I now have memories that will last me the rest of my life. Great, great memories that I couldn't and wouldn't want to forget and a person that knows me better than anyone else. On the other side, though, things with this person aren't going to continue in the same way that they have been.

Not only was it the longest and most involved relationship that I'd ever been in, but it was also the only relationship that I'd ever been in where I told the person that I loved them. It wasn't just something I said, either. I'd never spoken those words to anyone for a reason. It was because when I did say them, I wanted them to really mean something both to the other person and myself. Even now that it's over, I still love the person, and probably always will, but as I said above, the definition of those words is going to have to change a bit.

It was one of those relationships in which both people involved had pretty strange quirks, but many of those quirks happened to overlap. Of course, many of them didn't, but that was partially what made it so interesting. Sure, there were misunderstandings once in awhile about what we each enjoyed, but we also learned a great deal from one another and came to respect each other even more for the most part. Those are some of the reasons that ending things hurt the most. Not because I don't think I'll ever find someone that I'll be interested to go out with, but because the strange, unique things that happened were only exclusive to our relationship and chances are I'll never run across the exact same sort of situations again.

We talked about moving into our first house and getting pets together and what kind of furniture we'd decorate with and what kind of things we'd hang on the wall. Of course, at the time we were having these conversations, they seemed like the most obvious things that we could be saying to one another. Although all the situations we talked about were sort of discussed as they might be someday, they were more like, "when it happens" rather than "if it happens."

In terms of looking at my life as a whole, I've probably just finished the first one third to one quarter of my life if I'm lucky, and now I'm back to nearly square one in regards to one part of it. Relationships are strange like that. If you're in school and you quit or drop out, you still keep the knowledge that you've learned and can apply it elsewhere. If you're at your job and you quit or are fired, you can take the knowledge you have of the job and find something elsewhere. With relationships, though, you drop back to the beginning again because everyone is so different. Sure, you can take things you're learned from past relationships and modify them and use them in other ones, but it's not the same.

The actual breaking up was something that I could see coming for a long time, but didn't really want to admit it to myself. When it kept stretching out for such a long period of time, I thought that by the time we reached the end, it wouldn't affect me as much once we'd actually said the words. I hoped that all the worrying that I'd been doing about it over the trajected arc would somehow pay off and I'd be able to sign on the dotted line and be emotionally detached from things when the time finally came to put into words what had been going on in both of our heads.

Of course I wasn't, and perhaps one of the reasons was because instead of saying that things were completely over and done with, we left a small window of opportunity open for dating again. It's one of those things that's said many times, but usually it's just said by one side of the relationship so that the other side can keep some hope alive and not feel so bad. Now that weeks have passed and conversations have continued (at a much lesser frequency), it's easier for me to see that the window indeed seems to be more closed than I thought.

Dealing with everything has really come in steps for me. I actually stated at one point that I went from being, "bitter about it all to completely indifferent." When the person I responded to stated that neither of those were particularly good things, I thought about it for a little bit, but had to agree. It wasn't that I was upset and mad about it all the time, or even that I went into a complete state of depression, but I did have some problems with how I should deal with things.

At one point, I had the idea that I should leave all the pictures that I had up of us in place, but over the course of a week or so, I found myself taking down one at a time until I was only left with one displayed picture in a frame on a bookshelf at home. Down came the pictures from over my computer at work (partially for my own good, and partially so co-workers would get a subtle hint to stop asking me about how things were going), and they all went into a nice little pile with the rest of the pictures that I own (albeit, in their own place).

Really, that's about it. Sure, there has been more that I haven't said here, but they're mainly things for the two people that were involved in it and really no one else. Things have sort of moved past the awkward post breakup stage and are now somewhere in that "how good of friends are we still going to be after all this?" (or some variation thereof) stage. I doubt I'll do anything drastic about my plight anytime in the near future, instead focusing more of my energy on other things for awhile. Of course, I'm sure I'll pause and think back to about how things were every so often, but as I said in the very first paragraph, it will be with an uneven mixture of happy and sad.

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