raison d' etre?

at the airport heading "home", another trip nearly completed. another chapter of my life finished.

my daughter is settled in at college. like everything else she's done in her life, i'm sure she'll excel at school and everything else she chooses to attack.

I feel like maybe my reason for being has been realized and my life is complete. Unfortunately, i'm not dead or dying so more than likely there are others in the world that I have yet to meet and hurt. My ex, my former family, my daughter and finally, B, have all been unfortunate recipients of the emotional pain that is the wake of my passing through their life.

It seems fitting somehow (a kind of cosmic justice or irony) that my greatest pain is the rejection by the one whom I desire the most. The more I want her, the more I love her, the more I want to make her mine, the more firmly she anchors herself into her life with her partner. why does this surprise me? From the minute we met, she's said she wasn't going to meet.

But over time, as our friendship evolved and grew, as it became something i'd never experienced before, as it became obvious that this, that -she- was the who and the what i'd searched for all my life, I became more and more sure, confident even, that it would be as important, as essential, as obvious to her as it'd become to me that not only would we meet, but that we belonged together.

But love is not a two way street. You can't control who you love. I love her. She loves him. I want to devote my life to her; she to him. Not that I think she's so devoted to him, but she is committed and she's not leaving, won't leave.

Perhaps that's part of my punishment. She had everything she wanted except for friendship and emotional connection. Now she has that too so why should she change her life? As it is she has everything. If she were to come to me she'd be giving up a lot - the house, the boat, the financial freedom, the life she'd always wanted. True, when she's not in the office she doesn't have what she gets from me, but she can get that from me at any time,whenever she wants it.

Our relationship has been (and is) the greatest relationship i've ever had with someone. It's a stellar example of what a friendship and a love can be and it's the kind of thing that most people probably never get the opportunity to experience. It's the best, most honorable thing in my life and it shows clearly (to me, anyway) how the relationship between a man and a woman should be. It should be the cornerstone of an amazing partnership. But its' light also starkly reminds me, every second of every day, that what's missing, what's required to make it (and me) complete is missing, is given instead to him. those things, her touch, her presence, her heart, -her-, are not and will not be mine. it's so ironic that just the knowledge of something so extraordinary would also highlight the absence of it in your life.