Yesterday, I learned something about a friend of mine. She is in love with someone; a person whom I do not know, but who has been in her life for some time. There was a time when she could tell me anything, and in fact, would. I was her confidant; her source of wisdom in times of distress. And I loved her. I loved her as deeply as I have ever loved another. I have never found another soul who matched me so perfectly, who played into my weaknesses with her strengths, and who needed my own strengths where she was weak. Even my first love, whom I surely loved as deeply before he passed on from this world, did not match me point for point as well as this woman did. She and I argued, and debated, but it was all in the pursuit of greater understanding and overcoming obstacles together.

And then . . . And then, the lying started. We both began to hold back, truth disappeared in the face of some need to protect the other from it. We hid it under everything we could, until there was nothing left between us but shadows and masks. But yet, somehow, I knew behind that mask still waited the woman I'd fallen so deeply and madly in love with. And I held onto that thought in so many ways, I let it consume me, and my every action and thought was tempered somehow by how it would affect my being with her. It wasn't always conscious, but I realize now, looking back, that it was always there. I wanted to be with her, and so it kept me from other relationships, other pursuits, because they would have taken me away from the ghost of the good thing we'd had.

I felt a panic unlike anything I'd ever felt before when I found out she was in love with another. I went from anger, to fear, to jealousy, to depression, to anxiety, to numbness . . . I stopped at numbness when it became apathy. I'd just passed through a torrent of emotion and then suddenly, I was left with this dark sea of nothingness.

And I waited for something to happen.

For a time, nothing did.

And then, slowly at first, it began to brighten. There was movement in the nothingness, and I was swept up into an emotional state which I've not felt in a long time. I felt as if an anchor had been withdrawn, and for a moment I was able to move freely. The obsession I'd built up quietly within my soul had shattered. I knew that she was gone, that there'd never truly been hope of reconciliation, but yet I'd held onto the thought anyway. But suddenly my obsession had no ground on which to stand, and it crumbled to dust.

I don't know what this new found freedom might become. I don't know where I'm headed. What I do know is that she no longer holds power over me, and for the first time in years, I don't feel weighed down by the thought of my captor, who has held my heart hostage with her intoxicating soul.

My heart is broken, and I am free. And that is perhaps the best feeling I've felt in a long while.