 I always wish for the end of winter until I realize that it had the fringe benefit of keeping everyone else inside and, however deceptively, making it appear that they were like me in their loneliness. So it's getting to be spring now, which means the streets are filling up with women in dresses and couples on walks. Apparently people look forward to this, but - to me - it's always the most depressing time of the year. It's like a living reminder of everything I've had and lost. 

This June, it'll be two years since the end of my last relationship. She suffered from BPD and PTSD, whereas I have BPD and what used to be called Asperger's. We loved each other very much and were the most important thing to each other until we put a label on things and, within months, everything went to shit. I think we both knew the other was "messed up," but neither of us were in treatment and neither of us articulated our actual issues until too late. She fucked up a lot. I fucked up a lot. In the end, she left me. I can't blame her, she had plenty of reasons. But it still hurts me to parts of myself I can't even name, because *I* know how hard I tried and *I* know that if she had just believed in me a little more, I could've improved and would've improved. If someone would just see that, for all my faults, I could offer the promise of never ever leaving them. No matter how much they hurt me, or how scared I was. And that, maybe, if only for that, they would love me enough to extend me the same guarantee. 

Two years later and I still miss her every single day. Not thirty minutes goes by when I don't think of her. When I see an attractive woman, I don't see that woman as herself, I see her as a reference to my ex. When I see a woman and a man together on the street, I don't hope that one day I'll find love; I think about my ex and how she probably looks like that right now, with someone else. I want her to be happy, but it still makes me cringe. I can't watch a movie or hear a song or see a commercial without thinking of what she'd think of it or how it relates to her. It's like my mind is running two apps at all time: whatever's actually happening to me, and this horrifying sidebar of her that replays all of her most endearing moments, wonderful qualities, and my most egregious fuck ups in a sadistically curated loop. 

I haven't held hands or hugged or so much as eaten dinner with a woman since I last saw her. I have no desire to. Not unless it's her...or my first (and only other) girlfriend, with whom I've now been broken up for almost 7 years. Who I also think about all the time. Who I never forgot. Who I still want. 

Anyone else feel like you don't view life in the form of hoping for new opportunities or with excitement about new possibilities and that all you want are the things you've already had and lost? Sometimes I sit in therapy and talk about the abstract notion of wanting a relationship, but I don't want to meet anyone new. Let alone be with them. I don't think I'm capable of it. I just want the people I love back, and I can never have it. And it sucks. 