When I opened my eyes today, for the first time in my life, I wished I had not woken up at all. With the holidays I have completely messed up my meds and it would have been merciful if this had just let me go peacefully. Instead I wake to tears in my eyes and a heavy heart, full of sadness and regrets.

I know I have certainly made some mistakes in my life, for which I am paying dearly, but I have always done my very best and never ever wanted to hurt anyone. Despite this, I know I have and I am truly sorry for any hurt I have caused anyone. It was never intentional. I seem to always be picking up the pieces of things gone wrong, just hoping that things will get better, but they only get worse. Tiny glimmers of hope are dashed by more and more challenges that come along.

The new year brings cause for reflection on the past and resolve to make things better, but I am faced with so many regrets and such an emptiness that I see no hope for the future. It has been a couple of years of incredible misfortune and bad decisions and my one “will to go on”, falling in love with someone who I had long given up ever finding, was my one beacon of light to keep me going. She altered the course of my life like no other and I am here in London only because I fell so hard for her. She brought me such joy, such romance, such promise of a better life, full of everlasting love with the woman of my dreams. It is just one more mistake that I thought we would be together forever. The signs were all there. We talked for hours. She couldn’t get through the day without hearing the sound of my voice. Our passion when we were together was something I had never experienced in my life, nor did I think was even possible. I honestly thought I had been in love before, but nothing compared to how I felt about her. She was what “you complete me” was all about. It was the first time I understood what that truly meant.

The last few months have been the reality of what the term “love is blind” really means. I chose to only see all the signs that she loved me in return, while ignoring all the “obvious to anyone else” signs that this was not what I believed it was for her. I do not consider myself a stupid man, yet, when I pay attention to those things I conveniently chose to ignore before, I feel like a total idiot for being so incredibly stupid. Sometimes when you wish for something to be so perfect, you miss all the all too obvious warning signs that it is not what you hoped for.

If I have learned anything from this it is a reaffirmation of my beliefs to always tell the truth and that any great relationship is based on trust and respect. I bought into her idea that it was just “not the right time to be public” with our relationship, yet it burned in my very soul that this meant lying to her daughter, someone incredibly important to me. When would the right time be and, when it came, how could I explain to her that I had been lying all this time? And why would it upset a child to know that someone loves her Mom to death? What sort of message does it send to an impressionable eleven year old when she is not to tell anyone I exist? Is she not just participating in the lies? She sees that I am kept from her brother and sister and all of her Mum’s friends, yet she knows I love her and her Mom. When she shushes me when the phone rings in case someone would hear me, does she understand why? How does this help her to respect me? I never understood any of this and all it made me feel was useless.

As hurtful as it is to admit, I now get it. If I was someone important to her, someone she respected and cared for, she would have never had a problem introducing me to her friends or family. I was simply the “closet boyfriend”, called upon when she needed something done or didn’t want to be alone. When friends or family called I was not needed anymore. This is why Christmas Eve was so hard for me to understand, and at the very time I told her how difficult Christmas was for me without my kids. I needed her more than ever that night, but my needs were secondary. New Year’s Eve was different. She needed me. And what woman doesn’t want to be loved on New Year’s Eve? It was magical and I will never forget this night, no matter how badly it has now turned out.

It is a very dark time for me. I am full of regrets. Without her love I am completely lost and have no idea what to do. The very thought of her with someone else rips a hole in my heart. I just want to run, but I have nowhere to go and no way to get there.

I write this blog as a cry for help, even though I know I have few friends left in the world who care if I live or die. I do want anyone reading this to know that this is not in any way anything against her. She never led me on or professed her undying love for me, in fact, she has not even said she loved me for a very long time now. She is an incredible woman and I sincerely hope she falls in love with someone as much as I have fallen for her. It is the regret of my life that this is not me, but I will always love her, no matter what. She has done what she felt was right for her and her family, and my loving her does not change that. Wishing she loved me does not make it happen. Please do not misunderstand that I am saying she has done anything wrong here. She hasn’t. It devastates me that she doesn’t care enough to make me public, but that is only because I love her. She doesn’t love me back, so making whatever it is we are public would only come back to haunt her. If her kids saw us as being in love that would be great and they would be happy for their Mom, but when she knows I am not what she wants in her life, then it would only look like a mistake to her family. I get it, painful as it is.

I am in a strange city, stuck in a barely minimum wage job. I have no friends here and no life. I have a car I can’t afford. I am deeply in debt with no real way to get out of it, short of winning the lottery. I can’t earn the love and respect of the only woman I have ever truly loved. I miss living out West, mostly for the lifestyle. I’d like to think the friends I made over the fifteen years I lived there miss me a little, but most of them make no attempt to stay in touch, so I guess I am a forgotten man. I remain deeply troubled about my kids. I never did anything to deserve being shut out of their lives all these years. I will go to my grave not understanding how they could be so cruel to their father. I am sixty years old with no hope of any retirement. I am dead broke and everything I have tried these months since I’ve been back has gone nowhere. I have submitted proposal after proposal on ideas I know would make money, but no one even acknowledges you any more. Companies are not open to original thought anymore because their lawyers are so worried about intellectual property. I have submitted product ideas to companies that don’t even respond. I have spent months developing a concept that would revolutionize the internet, submitting it to just about everyone, like Microsoft, Google, Apple, Ning and others, all with zero response. I even got a response from Steve Jobs personal iphone, asking for more info, but it went nowhere. People have no concept that you might be hanging on by a thread and that their actions could change a life, or save one. It is truly an uncaring and heartless world. No one will miss me.