It's always incredibly sad when you say goodbye to a loved one.
Doubly so when its the one that convinced you that "loved" ones could still exist in your life beyond family and people you've known forever.
You would think at 46 it would be different somehow, different to the way it was when you were 16.
But it isn't
Not really
The big hole in your chest is still there, the tightness, still there
You still put on a brave face to everyone around you lest they know the pain you're in
And it still doesn't make
any
*******
sense
at
all
...
..
.
So you just choke everything down as best you can,
move on,
lick your wounds,
and try not to let this moment of your past dictate your future the way theirs did.
And therein lies the tragedy of it all I guess.
You can go forward assuming everyone's the same, put up walls, let nobody in for fear you'll feel this way again and in some bizarre ******* of the word feel "safe"
or
you lay low for a while and go out there again
forgive and forget
really and truly try and forget
let the future be anything it wants to be without looking in every nook and cranny, every gesture, every subtext every moment...... for signs that its going to happen again, that he or she is just like "they" were.

Whoever said insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result has clearly never been in love.