It's been a long time since I woke myself up in the middle of the night from hyperventilating due to a dream.  But it happened again last night.  All the times it's happened in the past year have been because of dreams with him in them.

The one last night involved me seeing him again.  I can't remember if other people were around; I think they were.  And he was talking as if we were just two old friends catching up.  Completely ignoring the history we have together.  And he started talking about the last girl he fucked, about how he was banging it out with her, and how it seemed like she was getting attached and wanted an actual relationship with him...I cut him off.  I don't remember what I said, but I think I just wanted him to stop.  I didn't want to hear how he moved on to fucking other women, just like he did before we were together.  And I couldn't just pretend like everything was okay, like hearing the man I would die for casually talk about his sex life outside of our no-longer-existent marriage.

I think in my dream I started crying.  I didn't wake myself up by crying (although that happened the last time), but I did wake myself up by hyperventilating.

...

I don't know how to not be married to him.

I don't know how to carry on with life, where everything about my life currently is not at all what I ever dreamed or imagined it would be.

I thought I found the man I loved.  The man who loved me.  Who called me the love of his life.  Who reassured me over and over and over again that he wasn't going anywhere...only to abandon me.

It's like no one understands how deeply and severely that absolutely fucks up your mind.

I only ever wanted a future with him.
To create memories.  To travel.  To take pictures together of the things we saw, of each other.  To have a happy, safe, loving home, filled with the babies he dreamed about wanting us to have.

And now I will never get to experience that future.

I have no future now.

I know he's no longer mine.
I know that whatever he does is no longer my business, and I have no say in it.
I know that.

And yet the thought of him being with someone else makes me feel sick to my stomach.
Even though I know I have no right or say in the matter.

How do people do this.
How do they love and allow that love to be torn out of their hands and carry on?  How do they pretend as if a limb that was part of their body wasn't ripped away, and the bleeding goes on and on and on and on, because that wound will never, ever heal?
Even worse, how do they put themselves through it again?

I cannot.
For several reasons.
Most of which have been laid out in previous posts.

I have been damned to grow old (if I actually do grow old) and to grow old alone.

If I were to ever have children, I would tell them to never, ever, ever give their heart away to someone else.  I would tell them that it's not worth it.  Because it's true: love equals pain.  

And the pain is too much to bear.