Healing yet still broken heart

[mbak]

I need advice or to just vent this out into the vast internet. First off please don’t judge me for any of this and tell me to get over it or whatever some of you self-righteous bloggers do; it’s not helpful especially because I know I bring a lot of it on myself and besides everyone can have similar situations but you can never really understand how another person processes it.
Anyhow here is my story. About two years ago I met this guy at a party of a former coworker. Usually I don’t go to parties but a few of my friend were going and dragged me along. Most parties I find a spot on a couch and not mingle to much but this guy and I hit it off. I my boyfriend of a year had just broken up with me out of the blue and while I was still hurting I knew it was for the best since in all that time it never occurred to me to say ‘I love you’ because it wasn’t true and probably never would have been. Well this guy at the party we’ll call Ted and I chatted and I felt….I don’t know something. I could tell he wanted more but another girl told me his fiancée had just cheated on him so I avoided his advances and he stepped back to when my ex showed up, who turned out to be Ted’s friend, and made it very clear by wrapping an unwanted arm around me that he was staking a claim. I left after that bullshit, especially because I had had too much to drink, and waved goodbye to Ted figuring I’d never see him again.
But fate had other things in mind. I was luckily rehired for a seasonal job after the grant money ran out on my current job ran out and low and behold there was Ted. He had ended this for good with his fiancée and while I was hesitant to start a relationship with a coworker I didn’t turn down his advances. Within a weeks we were dating and things got serious quickly. I was very hands off because I was scared of getting hurt again but he was the one who wanted to hang out every night and on the weekends, who would ALWAYS switch his break at work to be on mine. After a month, he bought me a beautiful necklace and told me he loved me and I said it back because I realized it was true. (and let me make it clear I don’t say I love you unless I mean it because I think it’s something I think gets thrown around too much.) His parents loved me (apparently I was the first girl he had ever brought home they approved of), and his mom said it was the happiest she had seen him in a long time and told me he told me more in a day how much he loved me than he told his ex in a month.
After six months things started to get shaky. He was a little distant (I found out later his ex was tormenting him and having her new boyfriend do things like slash his tires and threaten him though he hadn’t made contact with her for months). He was still the one wanting to spend as much time with me even though I was super busy with a new job that usually had me working 50 hour weeks and he was grad school hunting. I knew the signs I had seen my sister’s relationship recently go through the same thing, but he was still giving me the same amount of attention, still saying I love you, still telling me I was the best thing that had happened to him, and even talking of the future. Then one day he ended things and I was so upset. He didn’t really give a reason except to say I was too good for him, that he didn’t want to drag me into his mess of a life (because he was a pothead and a small time dealer which I had known for a long time but didn’t address because I didn’t really care), and I would always be his girl. His mom called me later (which she had never done) and said she and his father were shocked and thought he was crazy.
I broke off all contact with him especially when I found out he was dating another girl two weeks later and professing this was the love of his life. In the end he put a lot of money into this ‘love of his life’ only to have her use him as a sex buddy and never really wanted to be his girlfriend, and use him for money. In the end she cheated on him stole about $1000 from him and moved back home to the west coast. He in turn ended up chasing after her and applied to a grad school (which he got except to) near her even though she said she never wanted to see him again. (I found all this out from his roommate and his mother).
It had been three months at this point since we broke up and he contact me again, looking for pity which I didn’t not give. He said he had been thinking a lot and a talk with a random stranger had put a lot of stuff into place. He wanted to see me again and talk. We did and hit it off again even though I knew him moving 3000 miles away was looming on the horizon, a short three months away. We made the most out of those three months but in the end a few weeks before he left he said we couldn’t continue (though he would like to see me before he left and would like if I came and visited him). We were just friends he said, though he later said if he was staying here he would stay with me. So again we parted ways though I saw if off at the airport (and I’m proud to say I did not cry) and he kissed me like he was going to his execution.
Since then I’ve visited him but kept limited contact with him otherwise. He dated another girl (for like a week), I dated another guy (for only a month) neither of which ended well and he acted like I ripped his heart out when he found out. He rarely contacts me but when he does its to confess an undying love, to say he will never stop loving me, to ask if I still feel the same. In truth I do and I haven’t dated anyone else (partially because online dating sucks and being out of school and working in an office doesn’t lend to meeting people) and while he has fooled around and later confessed to me I still can’t shake him. I let his comments of ‘a year til I move home isn’t long’, or someday, or ‘I’ll never be like my dad’, or him randomly picking out baby names, or saying he dreads when our parents meet, or you really should hold off on getting a dog (which when I asked why he ignored and stated he would be moving to Florida after he finished school maybe with a special girl). (All of which are confusing and let me get my hopes up)
I get better every day knowing I may never be with him but I know now if you love someone set them free and if they come back it was meant to be. I also except the fact that I may never get over him and be a crazy animal lady because of it. I’ve gotten better too after having a long talk with an older gentleman whose horse stable I sometimes work at. He has helped me realize things like that am an attractive, smart individual, who is laid back, funny, honest, very loyal and caring. He told me he knew these things from the first week he met me because of the way the horses responded to me. He also made me feel better by telling me that if this guy doesn’t realize that you don’t throw away a person that put up with your bullshit and stay around after you have you have hurt them, and if Ted doesn’t see it he doesn’t deserve me. The most meaningful thing he told me one time was some people spend their whole lives looking over the horizon they never realize what is right under their nose until it’s too late. So that’s my long drawn out story. Thank you and have a good night.

[heavenlylove]

your writting skills are amazing mbak :-).
I read your story, seems bit complicated to me or probably its kind of offtarck to my defination of love.
Anyways, recently I have read an article with heading as Complete acceptance... the article is about a girl who got betrayed in Love....her story is completely different though but its concept could be helpful for you. Just check it out on website named 'upsohigh' with com attached to it as prefix.

Confused love stories end up in mesh. You dont need any one else suggestions just sit alone and think about your relationship. Dont be biases and keep your happiness above all. In any case dont hurt yourself.
Good Luck