I have loved, and been loved

There are people in my life who I love, and there are people in my life who love me.  The two don't always correlate.  There are also people who are no longer in my life for various reasons, some I lost figuratively and some I lost literally.  They vary in terms of the type of love, platonic vs romantic etc.

The one thing that remains constant however is that those people I came to love, I have never stopped loving.  Even now years later, and in some cases decades.

There were some who hurt me, so badly, who cut so deeply I could never forgive them.  They will never be allowed into my life again and the pain they caused and the scars they inflicted will never fully heal because despite the pain they caused I can't stop loving them.  I have enough self respect to walk away and stay away.

There were some with whom I parted ways as our paths led in different directions.  Some partings were bitter-sweet and others were just plain bitter - these people I don't rule out the possibility of them entering my life again in the future but it would need to be for a very good reason.

Then there are the amicable few, with whom I parted ways on good terms.  These are often the people I miss the most, because we parted ways with no real reason other than simply drifting apart.

There is an argument that some will raise, that if you truly loved someone you would do whatever you could to keep them in your life.  To them I would simply retort "if you truly love something, set it free, if it was meant to be it will come back to you"; the sad truth is that they don't always come back, but that doesn't change how you felt about them.  In many cases my love was unrequited - some platonic and some romantic.  I won't try and keep people in my life who do not want me in theirs, no matter what I feel for them.

All this I know yet it brings back one thing that others often find difficult to understand.  Although I will always love, I am not "in love" with these people - even those who are still in my life who I would not want to leave it.  For many of these people my endearment comes from the support they have given me and the bonds we have formed.  Some have helped me through some quite dark times in my life and while I look forward to the day when I fall in love with someone who can accept all this, they must accept that my feelings will never change, but they hold no danger, no risk, no threat to my love I would show them.  For all of these people, I could never be with any of them, and they know that.  I am quite adamant about that, I do not like to live my life in circles.  For those that were romantic they had their chance and that has now passed - they'll never be anything more than close friends.

This may seem like a random post throwing together a myriad of emotions, but the truth, as is so often the case with anything I write here, is that there is a story untold that lies behind these words.  It's actually quite ironic that despite the openness, the heart on my sleeve, and the soul bearing you may read on here, there is so much more unsaid.  I used to think if I wrote an autobiography I would call it "The Boy Who Cried Love" but as I have grown and come to understand myself more and more I think a more apt title would be "The Other Half of The Story"