"Or I'll never fall in love again..."

Or at least, that's how the song goes.  The first line, the title of this post, that I can agree with.  Every time I fall in love with anyone it is for forever.  Even when the relationship is over, the feeling of love lingers.  Not that I would ever want it back, but I don't think it ever really goes away either.  I'm not sure how to put it into words, but people change and the "in love" part, I think for me, still applies to that person that I originally fell in love with, even though, probably, that person doesn't exist anymore.

After posting recently here about people I care about and associating them (in my mind, not in my blog) with people from my past who have meant the world to me, I find myself wrapped up in thinking about all the people I have loved over the years...  many of whom I have lost somewhere along the way.

There's one person in particular who keeps coming up for me.  He is my "what if" guy...  He's the one I loved more than anything and, had circumstances been different, my entire life would not be what it is today.

We were best friends.  We spent most of our time together, even though we had our own interests outside of each other, we always came back to each other.  We shared dreams and stories and hopes, we would sit together, with me on his lap and just watch the clouds go by.  We were madly in love with each other without ever knowing that the other felt the same way.  But I had a boyfriend, and he was dating several people and it never came to that point with us.  I loved him, he loved me and neither one of us ever, and I mean EVER, acted on that or even said a word.  The day I left for Michigan to be with, what I thought at the time was the love of my life, he begged me to stay and asked me to marry him.

I'm not sure I took him seriously at that point...  I think it scared me far too much to even begin to think about things on that level.  But looking back, I do think that part of him really was serious.  And, you know, in some ways it completely broke my heart to turn him down.  Had circumstances been even slightly different...  well...  that's why he's the "what if" guy.

I still love him, I'm still in love with him (or at least who he used to be) even though we have lost touch.  I think that I always will (be).  I don't know if I'll ever actually have an opportunity to tell him that, but some part of me holds out an unrealistic hope of that ~*someday*~  I periodically go looking for him, and sometimes I find him and make contact...  contact that lasts for some short period of time and then peters out again.

Last time I saw him, he had a girlfriend and *I* was single...  he was pining and ending it, but he was in no place to be with me...  on any level.  I didn't really get to see him at all during that trip until it was time for me to leave.  At the end, though, when we were together and really hanging out, it was totally like old times... and all those old feelings came back to me.  I didn't tell him how I felt then.  I couldn't cause him the pain, in this already painful moment, that I had gone through when he did it to me.  I am thinking about whether or not it's worth it to try to find him again.

I'm always going to have that wondering in the back of my head.  "How come we never dated?"  Even though I know the answer...  we were madly, though unrequitedly in love with each other.  And neither one of us ever said or did a damn thing about it...  at least, not until it was time to move on, anyway.

That's the thing for me.  We were in love with each other for YEARS.  I don't know that either of us knew that the other was in the same place at the time, but we kept that secret forever and ever...  from each other... maybe even from ourselves, individually.  I don't think I want to go down that road again and wonder, years after the fact, "Why didn't we ever date?"  Because these days that answer is not nearly as clear cut as it was 15 years ago.  These days the answer is little more than "I'm a fucking chickenshit and can't say anything because I'm paralyzed from fear."  Hah.  Lovely.