Neil Sedaka was right.

Breaking up is hard to do.

I have been coy but not too subtle the last few postings. Fact is, I have finally broken off my connection to B entirely. Tried to adjust, re-arrange, cope, adapt, etc. to the impossibility of our being the kind of friends and lovers and brothers I had hoped for. But in the end, the only way I could do it at all was to focus on the now to the almost complete exclusion of the future AND the past. Ironically, since this kind of isolated focus was the major problem I had with him, it became the only way I could handle being with him. But my heart, finally, wanted what it wanted. This led to far more unhappiness than happiness.

The differences in what we both wanted, differences that had been present since the first time I raised the question of us becoming more than casual, remained. We have broken up before, a few times, but our attraction to each other has been so powerful that we found ways to re-connect. Only to reach this impasse again and again. As I told him, he has seemed to me both the irresistible force and the immovable object.

It is not original at all. And as my head has begun to clear, it embarrasses me that I did not see it more accurately long before now and act on what I saw. But then being in love has never been a doorway to epistemological clarity. And I have been very much, very much, in love with him. Very much.

But that has to end. And the only way it can end for me is the tried and true way I have put off for the last six months: breaking up. Goodbye and no contact anymore. As a former lover of mine, now dead, used to say, "The only way to get over this is to go through it." Which is what I am doing now.

It is the most common and yet feels like the most searingly unnatural of avenues. In order to regain a sense of ordinary happiness one day, I now deprive myself of all connection with the man in whose company I have been happier than I can ever remember being. Maybe love can convince you of the reality of both God and the devil.