The most recent issue of Psychology Today is full of helpful articles, including one on managing extremes and finding a more moderate way of life and feeling.

One particular part of the article hit me so hard I felt both shame that I may be like what they are describing and hope that this may be just the slap in the face I need to (truly) show me that what I have been feeling for almost five years is absolute madness. 

I am so glad that I never once did or said anything about my feelings for this person, but I am still deeply troubled by the words below because they just hit way too close and even though I am not obsessive about it and believe my feelings are genuine and ones of caring and not bad I really, really do not want to be this way:

My deepest regret is not that the person I like does not feel the same way (that's always been a no-brainer not only because she is totally outside my league, whatever that expression really means, but because I do not register on her radar at all and the circumstances involved make it impossible even for the most casual of friendships) but that I respect her immensely professionally and wish I had a better working relationship with her, completely separate from how I personally feel.

I feel like I am finally waking up from the very bad fog I have been living in for way too long and that I am awake, realizing that the silly things I believed (or rather wanted to believe) were just dreams I wished were true. The unrequited feelings I have for someone in my life (but only in my life in the sense that circumstances beyond either of our control places us in the same place almost daily) will never go away but I have accepted that and can live with it quietly until it really does go away someday. 

The harder thing to accept is the friendship I have lost with someone I met when we were bonding over shared pain and formed a connection that transcended one common thing and became many. I will never know what I did wrong to lose it, but I suspect it is because I have never been very good at friendships and even worse at sustaining them, no matter how much I so want to be and have good intentions.

On Saturday it will be exactly one year since I brought my cat home and into my life and he has been a huge force in my reconciling certain things I know to be true and making peace with them. He has shown me unconditional love and what it is like to love a being who can be affectionate back and not care what I look like or whether I am socially awkward. His company is the therapy and mutual friendship I have long been looking for and even if non-animal people do not get it, even if my family thinks I am a crazy cat lady, I am okay with that and really do believe that animals can be soul mates.

Heartbreak is feeling one thing and knowing a different one, loving someone even knowing she may very well hate you for doing so, respecting someone despite seeing in her eyes she thinks you're a fool. Heartbreak is moving on when each step forward hurts and you still have to see her almost every day, the only thing keeping you going...knowing moving on is the right and only thing to do.

I am a huge believer in good intentions and a person's meaning well, but if their meaning well is the only reason they are staying in a friendship with you, well then that can hurt as much as an intentional meanness can. A friendship that means a whole, whole lot to you can end up being heartbreaking and very confusing when it becomes clearer and clearer with each passing day that it is obligation and not sincere wanting on the person's part to be your friend.

Not all friendships are meant to be. The best you can do is be yourself, keep your expectations low.-Judge John Hodgman

I saw this very recently and it really, really stuck with me:

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/29/magazine/judge-john-hodgman-on-forced-friendships.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fjudge-john-hodgman&action=click&contentCollection=magazine&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=10&pgtype=collection


I will always like the people I like and I also (I would like to think) will always like people, in general. But to hope for a friendship that is just never ever going to happen or is only going to come from some kind of cluelessness that results in an awkward and unintentionally forced friendship...well, that is just asking for a lot of heartache and putting someone you really care about in a very uncomfortable position.