Breakup and the death of a great friend

[SlowGold]

Subconsciously, I must still miss her. The purpose of writing this is not to get her back. I just want her to know that I still care, and mainly I want to clear my head of this. Months will go by and I won't think of her at all, then all of a sudden, she pops into my head again, usually dreaming about her as well, when she is in my head. When I do dream about her, I wake up upset. I dreamt of her last night and is a lot of the reason I am writing this. Each time we broke off our relationship, I told her we need to be apart and grow from this. It makes me feel selfish, but it's the best thing for both of our lives. We have tried to be "just friends" a few different times since the breakup and it just ends up in me becoming attached to her emotionally and the feelings of love come on again. I do not want that for her, or myself. She could never understand this. We have been apart for over 5 years. For the last 2-3 years there has not been any contact except for the facebook add friends(I have since removed her), or occasional "hello, how are you doing?" text message or phone call. Lately, She seems to be reaching out to me. I changed my phone number, but I got a message on facebook from her recently and it kind of turned me upside down to see that she has been thinking about me still. It has been hard enough to tell myself not to act on impulses and contact her because I know what the end result would be for me. The original breakup was in the fall of 2005. Earlier that summer, we both lost a mutual dear friend, to a drug overdose. I know it crushed both of us to lose him, but then when we broke up, I went on a downward spiral of depression, guilt, anxiety, drug abuse, etc. For a few years there I pretty much gave up and hit my rock bottom. I have since quit the drugs and alcohol, and am now working with a therapist at a local mental health facility. I WANT to get better. However it seems like each time there is a bit of contact with her, or even a dream about her, I start feeling badly again, partially because I feel like a jerk for ignoring her, and partially because I can't do this to myself anymore. There is my catch 22. There is always that glimmer of hope that we can reconcile, and it does pop into my head, but I usually nix that feeling pretty fast because if I think about it a lot, it will start to consume me. I just don't want to feel this way anymore, about myself and about her. Mainly, I wish I could just let go.

 

I have dated other women before her and got over them with time. However this seems to be not going away. I have a feeling that the loss of her and the loss of my friend are connected.