Impending...

Well, yes, it's been several months since I've posted here. I sometimes feel like I don't have much to contribute, because I don't really date and it honestly gets boring when all I have to talk about is my knitting and my cats (I'm such a spinster!). But today, I have something I need to get out of my system before I cry here at work. A man (we'll call him David) I consider to be one of my closest friends is moving to a different state in three weeks. There are a lot of emotions in my head and heart about this right now and I'll do my best to keep them more or less coherent and easy to follow.

First, a brief history: David and I met almost eight years ago (eight years in June) and seemed to hit it off well. I spent a lot of that summer with him and his friends, and everyone we knew wanted us to date. That never happened (and that's ok) but it could have. We spent so much time together. I also spent a lot of time at his house the next summer, when I was literally going crazy with depression and anxiety about some other events in my life. (When I say depression, I mean the full-on, actually diagnosed, suicidal, not eating, not sleeping version, which lasted for almost two years, not the "oh I missed 'Friends' I'm so depressed" version. Just to clarify.) I felt safe with him--safe enough that I fell asleep on his bed one night while he and his best friend "Jimmy" were fixing a computer, and I can't sleep anywhere but in my own bed. He saw me spiral down, and then he moved back home to California that August. He'd call or IM me almost every day for 6 months as I continued to plummet, and when he came back the next April, he was the person who tried to make me eat. At one point, he confronted me about being anorexic; years later I realized that he was the only one of my friends at the time who was concerned enough to risk our friendship. I wasn't anorexic, but it certainly seemed like it because my depression caused nearly complete loss of appetite and no one really saw me eat anything--I just wasn't hungry.

He was there the night I finally hit bottom, over a year after the event that triggered the depression. I cried to him for three hours and at the end of it, he said "You need to remember that you are a good person no matter what happened. None of this is your fault, and I want you to promise me that you'll stop thinking that" and gave me a big warm hug.

A year later, I ended up dating his neighbor for a few weeks, and then I stopped going to David's house for games every Sunday because I still wasn't better and there were a couple of people there who triggered some very weird moments in my brain. Not long after I stopped going to his house every weekend, he started dating someone I (mistakenly) didn't approve of. We butted heads about her several times, until it finally came to a head and he chewed me out in an email. We stopped talking for several months, until I became engaged to Ray and was more stable. Meanwhile, David and Anne were becoming more and more serious, and because I wasn't so crazy anymore, I could finally see her good qualities and what an amazing person she was (and still is). David and I patched things up, and I was able to be there for both him and Anne when they broke off their engagement, just like they were for me when Ray broke up with me for no good reason exactly two months after asking me to marry him.

In the ensuing couple of years David and I have reestablished a pretty good relationship. Looking back on all of it, I am overwhelmed by exactly how much I value, respect, and love him. This man met me when I was normal and stable and happy, watched me fall apart both emotionally and physically, saw me through hell and back, helped me get through my own broken engagement, offered to break Ray's knees for hurting me so badly, was willing (and happy!) to renew our friendship after so long, was patient with me when I hated him, and has been an incredible support and example.

He's moving in three weeks. This move will be good for him. He'll finally get away from "Diane", who has been trying to convince him to marry her ever since she elbowed me out of his life while pretending to be my "best friend". She won't take no for an answer, and he's told her no several times. She is manipulative, selfish, demanding, and needy, and he can't extricate himself from her because she always finds a way back in. Now, part of this is his fault, and he knows it, but I've felt for a long time (ever since he and Anne broke up) that he needs to get back to his home turf, get the desert back into his bones, and reset his life. I know this will be good for him, and I know he'll be better for it, but it still hurts that he's really leaving. I love him very much, and even though the likelihood of us ever getting to a romantic relationship is remote (despite the attraction to each other we've both confessed), and even though we'll have the Internet and phones and he's offered his extra bedroom to me when he buys a house, I feel like part of me is already missing. He is truly one of the best people I've ever met and I will miss him more than I can really express. I don't know if he'll ever really comprehend everything he's done for me, and I can only hope that I've done anything remotely close for him.

I hope I have.

May is going to be a hard month.