i cannot understand

I reached a realization this afternoon, looking through old pictures of the past school year. I found a picture of him and I when we were still together, and it stabbed my mind, it jarred me, so unprepared for its appearance was i. I can neither explain, nor understand what I still feel. I know that it is unlikely that he will ever see me as anything but weak, pathetic, and “too emotional,” but the unreasonable bit of myself that whispers at me, hisses at the corners of my being when I am at my most venerable, tells me, for once, the truth of this anxiety. I still love him. I will never consider ever getting back with him, for that desire is now in the past, if it ever was. I know that it is a sign that I am “hung up on him” to the rest of the immature high school world which I try to escape so often,; but I know the truth. I was not made to love lightly; it is not in my makeup to be careless with what real emotions I actually have. I do not know how to love and pass on, to skip from one relationship to another like a stone on a pond. I tried to throw it off as some young fling, something passing, something good while it lasted, but I cannot, and in my darkest moments, I still am pained by what happened to me. And as I look back, I still can see no way in which I could have won out over the frailty of youthful hearts. It was not in the cards that our relationship should last. And I fell to the calculations of someone who wanted what I had bound my wandering heart to. A friend of mine, who is also a friend of hers, told me that she had wanted him, and that she was determined to have him, and I had no idea that I should have guarded myself against the agony of defeat, the sinister shock of being a victim in a contest I didn’t even know I was to fight in. I have stopped talking about it to other people, except in vague reference, but the truth is that I still hurt. I think I will love this child until I die. And a child he was, for if I was anything to him, it was not his lover, but a mother. I told him, in one of the first alone face to face conversations that ever had, that he would outgrow me, and he laughed. But that is what happened, as every child outgrows the person who watched over them, so he outgrew me. And I also made the mistake of unconsciously looking upon him as someone to heal, I wanted so badly to save him, and I was not prepared for the ugly truth, that I can save no one, not even myself from having my heart broken and I should never have considered him sheltered beneath my wings, because it does not make for a healthy relationship if one partner watches and the other partner chafes against the bonds of a clueless would-be hero. I think of all the things that could have done to make it right, all the ways I could have salvaged some happiness out of our time together, but even from here, where I have the benefit of time, I can see no way that I could have ever ended up happy, especially as I now realize that it was a very cruel relationship indeed, I do not believe that I have ever cried so much in my entire life as I did when I was with him. And I feel a slight regret for all the things we never did, I never saw him wake up, never held him in my arms underneath my chosen world, that of the night and stars. I can only feel a pang every time I see him, the remembered feeling of what was, and what I must now never allow myself to show or feel again. We speak, never of anything but passing triviality, but we do not fight, it is as if there is something between us now, a pact, never to upset the other, or to admit it if we do. He does not feel me worth his time now, he is happy with his new love, and has no time for someone who cannot move on. I wish I could not feel, for this hurts at times more then I can bear, I have been fooling myself if I thought that I could simply pass this by untouched. I know that my heart will quicken again some day, and I know that they will tell me that I will forget this, this reminder that I too am so undeniably human, and weakened by my uncontrolled emotions. But I can learn to show nothing, even if inside I scream every time I see her, even though it was he who feel out of love with me and the fact that she and he committed a betrayal of trust… means nothing, she is only a corporal reminder of that which in myself I so despise, the fact that I let myself get so close to someone that they could hurt me, something I have tried all my life not to do. And I did it, I let myself fall in love and it tore me apart. I have never before wished with such passion that I had not been born old, I wish that I could have been a child for all of my youth like everyone else, so that I could have not the benefit of looking back so vividly and hurting so terribly. And it does not get easier with time, for to me, all times are now, I do not remember things linearly; if it happened last week, last year, last lifetime, I will still see it as today. And if today is the way things are now, then today must have been the way things have always been, I know that what I feel must be what all other people feel, for it is impossible that I am the only person to take things so seriously, yet not care about anyone for most of the time. I see my mind from a distance, as if I am not myself, but a separate entity who assesses this puny mortal from a great height. This part of me feels a calm that has never wavered, only rippled on the surface from the buffeting of life. And yet… and yet… this that I feel, that I write, is now so very alien to me, as if it is not me who wrote it, but rather me who acted it out, as if I were playing a part so immensely complicated that I came to believe it myself. I feel as if I bought into a fairy tale, one of the less entertaining ones, and I can take it off of the shelf and force myself to reread it occasionally, and then put it back on the shelf until I need to speak from it again.
I read these words and find that the person who wrote them is foolish, that the person who penned such dire and heart broken, half healed phrases is an idiot to let the occurrences of their sordid little mortal life interfere so much with what their heart and soul should be.