unfaithful

I went to see him yesterday...God.

It was the one thing I had been looking forward to all break, to the exclusion of really enjoying myself at anything else. Let's face it - I've been picking fights with my boyfriend, maybe to show him he needs work but more, I think, to keep him angry at me so he doesn't get too close. Most times I'm home we're all over one another, but this time I've been home for three weeks and we've only been together (you know what I mean) twice.

That's also my doing. Sure, some nights I just didn't want to...but there were other nights when I was afraid that if we did, he wouldn't be the one consuming my thoughts.

So, have I been more hostile lately? Yes. I've been stricken with worry and anxiety, not just for what might have happened yesterday but at the thought that, the last time I talked to him, he said he was in his own personal hell. A melodramatic exaggeration, I later found, but I know that he doesn't have the easiest of roads...part of that is my fault, I imagine, but if he wasn't attracted to me somehow then he easily could have stopped it.

I don't blame him at all, because we were attracted to one another. Sometimes we got just to the point of admitting it, but something would cause us both to back off. Ultimately, he won't leave his wife even if he feels absolutely miserable in a marriage, and I am also attached to someone who, for the most part, makes me happy. He still doesn't fill the void entirely, though, and when I'm idle or quiet or lost in my dreams, he comes to me - or I go to him.

Yesterday told me most of what I needed to know; at the very least, he admitted to me that he had feelings for me, feelings he thinks that God would consider wrong. I don't want to agree, but I am morally opposed to adultery - hence my problem. Adultery takes many forms, including and especially the mental and emotional infidelity that comes from thinking of someone else too much and not focusing on the person you're with. I feel unfaithful, but to whom?

This should be an easy question, and that's what tells me this is a precarious situation. I should be feeling unfaithful to my boyfriend for having thoughts of someone else, which is what common sense tells me. The thing is...I've been in love with him for years, far longer than I've even known my boyfriend. I actually feel unfaithful for being with someone else, knowing the feelings I have. No matter that he's been married as long as I've been alive and is utterly unattainable even if he does feel as strongly as I do...

God, I thought it was just a crush! I should have known better; it isn't as if I tried to like him - it just happened. I can remember mostly every person I've ever liked, at any level, and it's easy to pick out who I generally felt for and who I simply decided to like. I'm an ace at feigning a deeper interest, but that's not what this is. I've been having thoughts about him since long before it ever would have been appropriate...oh wait, it still isn't. And haven't I told myself that it's wrong, that it's impractical, that if I ever wanted a chance at happiness I had to get over the petty crush and forget the way he makes me feel? And why should I forget the way he makes me feel, anyway? He has made me the happiest...and the saddest...I've ever been. It's like the all-consuming love that I'm always reading about in those damned Nora Roberts books (which I will die before admitting to have read), the gut-punching, unavoidable reality that causes euphoria and misery in one fell swoop. My heart never slows when I'm around him, and rarely when I'm not because I'm thinking about him. I'm chipping away from the inside.

God help me.