What is friendship?

Sometimes a story doesn’t tell the whole story.

What is love?

Love is washing the dishes after your wife of 30 years, a friend for almost 43, fixed you a home cooked meal not only for your birthday but for most of your birthday weekend.

Friendship is that shared space between two sets of states of energy that never goes away, regardless of circumstances, even if they never talk with each other ever again.

If we never leave home we never see that other thing which may not be the Next Great Thing but it’s a thing unto itself.

I’ve given it all I’ve got.

I’ve tried more than I thought I could have, decades of effort.

Starting over is not going to be easy.

I know that.

It’s scary.

It’s not a mystery, finding my own place, being me, not the person I’ve had to be to fill a single person’s needs.

It’s completely selfish, I know, wanting not to hate myself for living a falsehood, wearing a mask for the sake of a friend.

But, although the pain is tearing me apart, I’m in the process of letting go, moving on, so close I can smell the roses.

I do it for myself, I do it because of you, for you.

I lose my old life, lose everything I was to start anew.

I already it’s worth it.

It always has been, I’ve just been slow to admit it to myself.

But it’s never too late.

Never.

Too.

Late!