I have been thinking about the way things turned out, and I completely disagree with the necessity of it all being changed so drastically. She did not have to leave for this to be figure out. All we needed to do was go to therapy, and she went to a friend's house and made it very serious. This is something I take very serioudly, and I would still like the chance to get my wife back.

I still feel like so much was thrown away with the move that I have to pause and remind myself that this is a good thing. The good stuff coming out of this one outweighs the bad. The relationship isn't over yet, and there is hope for the future. If there is no hope for the future then she was absolutely right to leave, and it won't bother so much in the future because the pain and sting of the leaving will have worn off. I will have grown thicker skin because the necessity of it all was too much for the portions of self that require the work.

My biggest question is why are we not fighting like a team to make this work and keep each other. Hope is a powerful drug, and I hope for good things to happen. I am fighting for this relationship to succeed. Is she fighting alongside me, are we fighting as a team for growth and depth and connection in the relationship. I am fighting for that depth and connection.

We both had it in our minds that we were being strong enough to carry the weight for two people. I would like to be understood for what it was; I don't want or need acknowledgment that the method was the right one, because it wasn't. I want you to understand where I was coming from and how it made sense and how it was based in love. I felt like I had to be strong for the both of us, and I wasn't allowed to show weakness because I was the man who was to provide for us. I had this role playing in my head, and I didn't like it at all, but I was committed to being that person who is strong and provides and is there for people to help. I didn't realize that the emotional connection and the strength to admit to fears and cry and change course, that's strength, and the keeping-it-in style, bottled up and shoved away, can lead to overflows of these emotions in snappy and ugly ways. I thought I was doing the right thing by not letting all that show. The angry side got results at times, and that's why it is a devious method. It can work at times, but then the technique is being mis-applied.

New thought: there is no wrong way to fly, so long as you are where you want to be, and set up for the next move. That's life. I just connected the dots. It's all life. Every new skill and every new way of being or doing creates a microcosm for how we interact with the world and deal with problems. I have seen it all with curiosity. And I didn't see it with compassion. I tried to think about what solutions have worked for me, and I wanted to share those. I used the techniques that were used on me. I got to see what that does to a person. That could have unknowingly been my kids. I know now what is needed because it's the same thing I need in this moment: closeness, connection, need to be held, need to know that it is okay, let it out, feel it, I'm here, you're safe.

I needed help. The thought brings me to tears, and I feel deeply how alone I was as I struggled. I didn't feel allowed to show the things that were breaking. I didn't know how to handle things, and I thought I did. I was trying to be that awesome person who just gets it all done with a smile and doesn't cry about anything or feel these feelings of defeat. I thought I had to be strong all the time, and I wasn't allowed to have these moments. I was so wrong. These moments are necessary, and they are the precursor to greatness. I had it very wrong. My previous theory involved not having these moments. The idea went that if these moments don't exist, if they are ignored as non-existent, laughed about, dismissed, minimized, and swept aside as childish things that productive adults don't do.

I'd like to say other things. I'd like to move on to the hopeful future. I will tell the story as I see it. I will give the details that need to be described for me to feel the touch of my one true love, my sweetheart.

I arrive in this other country. But wait, let's rewind, this beautiful story has hope and sorrow, it has all the hallmarks of a great life, and the feelings are felt so deeply that the core remembers the wound, scarred, a little hurt, but mendable, and a story for the ages of love finding itself across time and distance. No distance is so great that our love can be quenched. No time so far gone that memories would not be able to walk the path as if it were the day before. We feel these attachments as bonds on the soul, binding us together as one heart, and the fear and anxiety of being next to so much passion and love causes the two hearts to wriggle and squirm, testing the new area, unfamiliar and wondering how this space is supposed to be, thinking there's a way, theorizing about how this should fit, and fighting against the natural fit because it is unlike the fit that was artificially forced upon this forming heart when it sought attachment as a young being in this world, without the ability to do, and only the ability to be what can be, a loving being, a human being, they are not born as human doings, that's the artificial shape I have contorted myself into being without consciously recognizing the need to not be that shape and to let the natural beauty and emotional self take shap in the arms of the one I love and for hers to take shape around me in the same fashion while I hold her close in my arms, hearts bound together as one.