Do we ALL carry torches?

Readers of Hermes blog will recognize this story. I hadn’t intended to share it like this until reading his story of R__ and J__. This is liable to earn me another cryptic comment suggesting therapy is in order!

THIS is my therapy. Deal with it.

An ex-boyfriend dropped back into my life recently, one who left me, deciding he'd not gotten over his ex. (I have this uncanny habit of falling for guys carrying torches, but that's another story.) I had just started to move on; just started to accept we were never going to be together, just started accepting invitations to go on miserable, insignificant dates. I had never wanted it to end. Now he says he might be ready to give it another chance. There's no hope of guarding against heartbreak. His presence has already resuscitated my most-feared enemy...that sucking vortex of false hope. Pain is inevitable; it has already begun. I swing back and forth concerning the appropriate response. I draft a reply which oozes near-worship and one that suggests that he go to hell. Each one makes me cry and neither feels right. I settle on something in-between and now await his reply. I'm prepared to face either direction...or so I tell myself...but I expect to find myself suffering, regardless.

Perhaps we each have a relationship in our past that we will never entirely move beyond. I can accept that the feelings will always be there; I just wish they were not so difficult to bury and walk away from. I wish they didn't cause such gut-wrenching agony.

Maybe I'll just board Hofzinser's party bus and try to forget.