Thoughts on Breakups and Relationships

I've been thinking. I wonder when we allow ourselves to become close to others, truly close, either in friendships or in more intimate relationships, whether we give little bits of ourselves away to those people. It seems to me that we do. Or it seems that I do, anyway. I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing, but it does mean that I'm easily hurt. I'm thinking specifically of J, of course. Once we were so close, and even now, he probably knows me better than anyone else does. But we aren't close anymore; we aren't anything anymore, although I love him in a different kind of way and wish him great fulfillment and happiness. It's just that it still feels like there's this part of myself, part of my soul, I suppose, that is still with him. It feels like he has it and I never will again. That sounds like I'm sadder than I actually am. With the loss of a very close relationship, isn't also a potential future and dreamed of happiness that are lost too? I think so. So maybe what I'm feeling is only the loss of what I believed could have been.

I don't know. It's like I am, in some small but significant way, a different person than I was with him. This is not a bad thing, necessarily. I think that, in the end, I'm probably a healthier person, maybe a stronger person. I do think that I have learned something about being content, and I suppose that counts for a lot. Still, it feels like there's this part of me that he has and always will have. And I don't think there's any way around that.