riP

I think this is really it.  Admittedly, I've thought so a number of times before and it has not turned out to be so.  But I think we've reached the point of no return now.  I'm happy to say that it was without anger or bitterness--so far as I could tell--and that I don't have any expectation of internet reprisals (as there were in the past).  I think it's just over.  And I feel relieved.  The ending of 

one of the great loves of my life was also the end of my life in so many ways.  And cutting the final connection with her is a way of cutting out the man who was so incredibly naive and trusting and foolish.  I will love again--am in love now, actually, with a lovely woman--but I won't be fooled again by friend or stranger.  Rest, Child Thomas.  You have to the Dark Tower come, and it is a place of peace.

And synchronicity being what it is in my life, I read this in Proust's Sodom & Gomorrah:

 "I no longer loved Gilberte.  She was for me like a dead person whom one has long mourned, but then oblivion had set in, and, were she to be resurrected, she would no longer be able to insert herself into a life no longer made for her.  I had no desire to see her any more, nor the desire even to show her that I was not keen to see her, which every day when I loved her I promised myself I would display once I no longer loved her."