I'm single.

This is a little bit expected and a little bit more unexpected. The way it happened made it much harder for me — unnecessarily and unfairly so — and I'm very disappointed about that. On the other hand, I understand very well why it did happen, it was in my power to prevent, and I'm even more disappointed in myself. But on the third hand, we had two years of easy, effortless joy in each other's company that many people never experience for even a week. To me, that's a value worth fighting to keep. My biggest disappointment is that, from the sound of things, we won't bother fighting for it.

I like to look on the bright side. There are many wonderful things that happened during our relationship and/or as a result of it, and I'm looking forward to regaining my wits so I can share some of them here.

In the meantime, it's rough going. The only way I can get my body to relax is to sleep, though that comes only in short bursts. I've discovered (and have taken advantage) that I have a 5-minute window after waking up wherein I can eat something.

The thought of being single doesn't frighten me; I was single for a long time before I met Christina, and I liked it. The knot in my chest is a bundle: the feeling of loss, the sense of having contributed to it, the idea that it didn't have to happen, the stabs of discovery of countless small assumptions of her presence, and the slow, ongoing process of separating our commingled lives.