Letting Her Go

Day one hundred and twenty-eight, Georgia. It is coming clear, slowly, that if I want a happy life I will have to let go of someone who matters to me very much.

It will take a while before I can. There is no way round it.

Why — I don't entirely know. Possibly she is a different person from the one I took her for. More likely there are simply misunderstandings between us, large ones, and too many.

I envy couples who manage twenty or thirty years, raise children and go over to the other side together, not necessarily at the same time. Even when one goes first, they stay attached to each other somehow. How do they do it? Is there a recipe?

I don't know. What I do know is that it has something to do with me.

I am forty-one. Sharing a life with a woman is apparently not what I get. I have had good times too and I am not going to complain about it, and the road in front of me makes me glad.

Still. We are made for other people. Giving and receiving is not an optional part of the design.