SpaceAce

This is so pathetic. I've never brought my personal life to a message board before and I thought I never would but all my friends live thousands of miles away and I don't have anyone to talk to.

Alana is the only woman I've ever loved. We've been together since we were teenagers and I thought we would be together forever. I can't remember the last time I looked into my future and didn't see her there. She accepted me for who I was when no one else including my family did. She was there when I was just a kid sweeping floors at Convenient and she was there for me the day my mother threw me out of the house into the winter snow with nowhere to go. She snuck me into her attic so I would have somewhere to stay. She was there when I was living in someone else's basement scraping out a living working for Minuteman. When I was sleeping in my car with the broken clutch and walking back and forth from the gas station to buy gas to run the heater so I wouldn't freeze to death, she was there. She brought me food from her college cafateria when I couldn't get enough to eat and spent the nights sleeping in the passenger seat next to me. She was there with me when I found my way into an emergency shelter and she was there when I entered their Transitional Living Program and got back ony my feet. We got our first apartment together in a rundown old building in downtown Cleveland, fifty yards from the projects and the ghettos. We were sleeping on the crummy old bed the apartment complex provided and cooking on the ancient gas stove but it was home because she was there with me. When I lost my job, she was there to keep things going until I found my way into this industry. She took care of me better than anyone else ever had. When I started doing well with my internet ventures, she was there to enjoy the rewards. Over the years we've had plenty of ups and downs but we always stayed together.

I watched her go from a flighty teen girl to one of the most impressive women I have ever known. She went out and got what she wanted. She took internships at the MS society doing PR, at a television news station doing various things, with an NPR radio station and eventually with a newspaper chain in the Cleveland area. I watched her struggle through school as we struggled through life and I was there when she graduated from both highschool and college. I never graduated from highschool and watching her get her diplomas made me so proud I thought I would burst.

She entered the highly competetive world of journalism and inch by inch made her way through the ranks from intern to reporter at a weekly to reporter at a daily and eventually she pursued and won a job at the Las Vegas Sun. I moved a lot when I was a kid, mostly around south Florida, and I moved around quite a lot in Cleveland. I also spent time homeless; in my car, on the streets, at shelters. I despise moving and all I really wanted was to stay where we were. It's easy for me to make casual friends but I only have two real solid friends in my life. Both of them live in Cleveland and I didn't want to leave them behind but I did because I love Alana more than I care about everything else in my life combined. So, I packed up everything in my life and left the only stability I had ever known. We came here to Las Veas last September and I thought we were moving forward with our lives.

Then, one night she rolls over in bed and taps me on the shoulder. "I think we should break up." I never even saw it coming. We'd had a stupid argument a few weeks previous and it had gone on longer than it should with us not being as friendly as we should have been, both of us waiting for the other person to make things right. During this time, an ex-coworker of hers came to town and took us out to dinner. Without telling me what was bothering her and without giving me a chance to fix the things that she saw as being wrong, she started calling this guy behind my back and set it all up nice and cozy so she would have someone to fall back on. Then she dropped the bomb on me.

Now I know all the things that were bothering here; things I didn't know or I knew but didn't understand the importance of. I've spent the last month doing everything I can to convince her that the things that are wrong can be fixed. I've never wanted anything as badly as I want a chance to show her that she was wrong about how I felt about her and that she was wrong about where our lives were heading but she won't give it to me. She tells me she wants to be married ow and she wants children and she actually believes she has a better chance getting those things sooner by starting a new relationship somewhere else with someone who, when he was here, told us how he doesn't have time for a relationship. This guy works in a job that requires him to keep two houses - one in New Jersey and one in Ohio - and flies him all around the country for work purposes. She's impressed by his job and his "drive". By the time she realizes that type-A drive that makes him so attractive to her also keeps him out of the house and often makes for a lonely life for the woman, it will be too late.

I've been 100% loyal to Alana at all times. I'd been with girls before her but I have not so much as kissed another woman since the day we first went out. I've never hit her, I've never ridiculed the things she's wanted in her life and I've never lied to her. When I am out of her site, she knows with absolute certainty that her love is safe with me and that I will be coming home to her. I would never dream of betraying her trust in even the most minor of ways. I wonder if she will find that with any other person in this world. I know she will never find anyone that loves her more than I do. My mother has never been my biggest fan and our relationship is strained at best. My mother is not the kind of mother who would take my side just because I am her son but when she found out about this, she said, "You're the only experience she's had with men and she doesn't know how bad it can be." I hope Alana never finds out how bad it can be. Now that I am fully aware of what's been wrong with our lives in her view, I know they can be fixed but she made her decision a month ago without coming to me with what was wrong and now I will never have a chance to make things right. I guess this man she's leaving me for talks a good game and she's willing to believe whatever he tells her.

Tonight she got on a plane.

I've never felt a hurt so huge in my life. I've known the pain of losing friends and loved ones; I've known the pain of watching my father slowly kill himself with drugs and alcohol; I've known the rejection of my family and the people who should by my rocks in this life; I've known the humiliation and desperation of being homeless in this country. At the center of everything was my woman who was the bright spot in my life no matter what was wrong and who I thought I would always have. Losing her is worse than every other pain and humiliation I have ever experienced rolled together. Growing up, crying was not acceptable for a male child. Honestly, I didn't think I could cry anymore. I thought tears were impossible for me. There have been situations in my life where I knew I should cry but I couldn't. I've wept like a child over this, though. It's pathetic and I am disgusted with myself but some things you just can't control. When I think I can get no sadder, I remember another special moment or something about my lover that I had forgotten and the hurt gets even worse. Worst of all is that all I wanted was a chance to fix eveything I had done wrong. I wanted nothing from Alana but a little bit of her time. I asked nothing return except that she stay and let me try to make things right. If I failed and we could not fix our life together, at least I would have the comfort of knowing we tried. She couldn't give me that, though. Her feelings for this man that she barely knows and has seen only once in two years are so strong that she couldn't put them off for a couple of months to work things out. I am the only person she has in the city and she is the only person I have. When she comes back Monday from her little field trip, we'll still be stuck living under the same roof.

So, here I am 2,000 miles from my family (such as it is) and the only two friends I have had since Junior High, truly alone for the first time in ten years. Yes, everyone gets their their heart broken at some point and, yes, it's nothing special but that doesn't matter. Alana was truly the thing that made my life worth living. Everything I wanted, I wanted because of her. All of my plans I planned for her. Every time I saw my future, I saw her. I'm more hurt and sad than I could have ever imagined. I am something I thought I was above, something I thought my previous life experience had made me immune to. I am lonely.

I know you don't care and I know you're all way too manly to feel this way and if you did feel this you'd be way too tough to admit it. Good for you. I thought I was tough, too, but you'd be amazed at how quickly you can crumble if the circumstances are right. So, I sit here now lost and utterly without direction, staring at the ceiling and thinking of all the things I could have done differently. I'm posting this because I have to release some of what is inside me and I know that at least one of you will read this and truly understand. The rest of you will snicker and mock but it's your loss if you've never known a love strong enough to make you understand. I hope those of you that do have what I just lost never lose it, yourselves.


SpaceAce
affiliates at cutecouples dot com
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