Thoughts?

[HelpWithGOLO]

Thank you, L-F, for your encouragement and kind words! Yeah, I'm still struggling with that feeling of my LO being "the one" and since I have no contact with her I can't get to know her better as an actual person. It makes it so much harder to think of her as a flawed person when all I have is this perfect story I've built about her in my head and nothing to disprove it. But I'm trying to remember she's just a regular person. I know she wasn't meant to be mine and there are probably many good reasons why that I'll never know. I have the right woman for me in my wife and that's who I need to be focusing all my attention on.

Thank you for the reminder that I should be making Christ the focus of this holiday. I've let this LE ruin most of this year for me and distract me from more important things. I'm going my hardest to end this month on a much more positive note.

I do hope that my posts here will help someone out there who's been struggling, too. I'm ashamed of some of the things I've done to try to get through it but at the same time I am trying to be open and honest as I go. Perhaps one of the reasons this LE happened to me is so I can help someone else who needs it. In any case, I'm going to keep moving forward.

[HelpWithGOLO]

It's a little after 6am (for me) as I'm writing this and I'm in kind of a weird head space right now so I hope what I'm writing makes sense.

2023 did not end well for me. Not at all. Despite my efforts, I eventually let me feelings for my LO get to me and it completely took away my joy for the holidays. All I could think about on Christmas Day as I was alone (my wife was working that day) was that my LO was somewhere with her husband and daughter having a wonderful time while I was sad and lonely. That night we went to see my parents, then the next day had to leave because they found out they had contracted COVID. A day or so later, I showed symptoms so we isolated for the rest of the year. We had made plans for New Year's but obviously that didn't happen so that made me depressed, too. My wife and I just kept each other company the whole time. During all this, something finally clicked for me. I know this is one of those "should have been obvious A LONG time ago" moments but it finally got through my mental fog. My wife was there for me. Through it all. Where was my LO? I've waited for her to reach out to me, pined and obsessed for her, spent countless hours crying and praying that she would come back into my life, wondering where she is and how she's doing. I haven't seen or talked to her since Jan 27th at approximately 9pm (yes, I remember the exact time, where I was, what we said and even the last look she had on her face). Why isn't she reaching out to me? Doesn't she love me back? Yeah. I know the answer. I've known all along and was trying to convince myself that she MUST have had at least a crush on me, right? It just hit me super hard this last week. I wasted almost all of 2023 on someone who will never reciprocate my feelings. She didn't say goodbye to me on my last day. She didn't say goodbye to me the night before. I don't know why and I probably never will. I will never know how she truly felt about me. I've created scenarios from maybe she was ill that day, maybe she was afraid to show how she felt to more unsettling ones like maybe she even thought I was a creep. It doesn't line up with any of our interactions but that's where my mind has gone at times. I let this LE steal an entire year of my life. Times when I should have been living in the moment and been so very happy...my birthday, my wife's birthday, our 20th anniversary and the 10 day trip we took, Christmas...I was secretly wishing I was with my LO instead. I can't ever get those moments back. No amount of wishing or obsessing or crying or anything will ever change how things happened between me and my LO. We were never meant to be together. I lost my mind over someone who MAY have thought I was a friend, at best. I'm so angry at myself for this and the time I've lost. I was profoundly lonely and haven't had a close friend in so very, very long that I went overboard and even developed romantic feelings. I've been telling myself since yesterday that she stole 2023 from me but she can't have 2024. I don't know how I'm going to feel when I reach exactly one year of NC. It's going to be rough. But I know without a doubt who WILL be there for me. It's not my LO. She has never tried to contact me and most likely never will. As much as it hurts I'm trying to remind myself that she just doesn't care about me, at least not like I do for her. I really hope she was genuine when she seemed to care about me. Those times when she'd flash that warm smile at me and strike up conversations when no one else would. I want to believe we were at least friends. I'd like to think that maybe she remembers me once in a while but what difference does that make? It's not like she's going to suddenly uproot her life and come to me. I'm trying not to harbor any ill feelings toward her since this LE is not her fault. She didn't make me develop these feelings. I projected so very much onto her and I regret it all. She seems like a nice person and I truly do hope she has a wonderful and happy life. I really do care about her as a person and think of her as a friend who I really needed at the time. I wish I could know how she's doing but it's really for the best that I never try to reach out. I want to so very badly but I know I'll just end up hurting myself more. Meanwhile I have someone living here with me who I never have to question how she feels about me. Someone who won't leave me confused and hurting. Someone who wants to be with me and has been with me through my ups and downs. Someone who held me in her arms on Jan 28th and let me cry without saying a word when I had my emotional breakdown as I realized I would never see my LO again. I will never understand how she did that. I don't know if I could have had the roles been reversed. We've never talked about it since and I spent all of last year being afraid to tell her that I still had feelings for my LO. But that was 2023. I refuse to let 2024 go the same way. I can't hold onto this pain any longer. Feeling sad and depressed and missing my person will not alter anything. My LO is gone from my life and I can't change the past. It truly sucks that this lesson cost me so very much. I'm going to make the best of this year and focus on making new friends and truly appreciating my wife. I truly don't deserve someone like her but I'm so thankful she's mine.

I hope I can maintain this new mentality. It's going to be a struggle but I vow to try my hardest to make this a much happier year for myself and those around me. Thank you for listening to me ramble again.

[HelpWithGOLO]

So, I'm waiting to hear from a potential counselor to see if they can fit me in sometime soon. In the meantime, as I think back on my memories of the time I spent with my LO, I find myself increasingly thinking about the couple of times she didn't act very nicely toward me. Most likely she was just having a bad day but there were a couple of times where she said or did something to me that seemed so out of the norm and really hurt. I don't know why I'm suddenly so focused on those moments. I've started dreaming about her again. But unlike how it used to be, it's not pleasant dreams where we're flirting or she tells me reciprocates my feelings. In these dreams, it's always me running into her where we used to work and she either ignores me or blows me off. I had one dream where she was acting like she was happy to see me so I took a risk and told her everything I felt. I looked her in the eyes, told her how much I appreciated her friendship, how much it had meant to me to know her, etc, etc. Everything I would have told her had I seen her that last day. I followed it by telling her how much I cared about her as a person. I wished her a great life and that it had been nice to know her. Then, unlike what I would have done in real life, I said I loved her. And she laughed at me. That hurt enough but then she started mocking me loudly so everyone nearby heard it. Thank goodness I woke up then. I know it was all a dream but it's really bothered me since. I would certainly hope the real version of her wouldn't have done that to me. I've always worried that someone there at work that last day saw me crying over her and told her about it later. My biggest fear is that she made fun of me with others about it. I know this is all irrational. But I keep having dreams like that and it's hard not to think about them during the day. I know it doesn't really matter what may or may not have happened. I can't change anything. If she really is the type of immature, mean person that would do something like that I'm much better off without her. I think these dreams and my obsession with those "bad" moments may be my subconscious trying extra hard to make me get over her. I have to say it's making her so much less attractive in my mind. But it also makes me sad to think that I might have been so wrong about what kind of person she is. I'd like to think she's a good person at heart. Like I've said so many times already, it really doesn't matter in the end. It's not likely I'll ever see her again. At best, she saw me as a work friend. She probably hasn't given me much thought, if any, in over a year. I just wish I could stop having these dreams. I plan to tell the counselor about all this when I get to talk to them, but I needed to vent about it somewhere for now. Thanks for reading.

[HelpWithGOLO]

So, after chickening out once and thinking I had things under control, I'm seeing a counselor this Tuesday. I have to say, the pain of this experience is starting to fade. I find myself wondering how she is doing but I don't feel as strongly toward her as I once did. Hopefully I keep on this course. I've written out a couple pages of my feelings and looking at it I see a very lonely man trying to hold onto something that was never his to begin with. She can't give me what I need. I've been breaking my own heart over someone who never wanted me. I wasted so much time over my LO and my life is passing me by. Recently I discovered a song by Toad the Wet Sprocket called "Throw It All Away". It talks about letting go of the past, something I am seriously struggling with. There's a line where he says "With the time I waste on a life I'll never have, Could've turned myself into a better man". I started crying. It was like he wrote it about me. I can't believe how much control I let this LE have over me. I know I'm not in my right mind just yet but at least I can see it now. The only thing I can do now is learn from this. I'm really nervous about how this first session will go but I know I need to do this. Before I lose any more of my time or my mind. I'll update again soon.