I've been watching from a distance and I know you are not in a good space ... I suspected / sensed this was so, even as I sit here in another city 1000 km's away ....

... and yet, you let no-one near you. I know I am the last person you want to have be concerned for you. I understand that, but it doesn't change the nature of my heart - and what lies therein.

you call me defensive and say I stick my claws out - yes I do...and perhaps I have learning to do there. No matter if I am scared or not, I will look.....

I watch you from a distance and I see you are not well, you hide behind your well-articulated, clinically business words ... and push me further and further and further away ... I won't say that it doesn't hurt. If it didn't I know that I don't care for you as deeply as I do - it would be neither here nor there....the fact that it does, that it causes that deep ache in my chest, and sadness in the pit of my stomach, as I watch you isolate yourself from those around you more and more, confirms that you are special to me. That has not changed. The words you send my way, so surgically sterile and clean, so perfectly sentenced together, show me that perhaps we have reached the end of the road and that our mutual learnings through one another will be very hard from this time on - until we fully part. That does not make for easy swallowing - I am tense and apprehensive as I know the possibility of a stormy keeping of professional company looms up ahead in the nearest future.

My words have been harsh, crisp, cutting toward you - and as I try to understand what my intention has been behind that I hope within myself that as I look there I will find that it was driven only by a deep concern, but I think I must admit that along with that is an anger of seeing you hurt yourself and my knowing there is nothing I can do about it, and so there is also frustration and disappointment as I see that I must continue to let go, let you be that rock you ascribed yourself to be like, the space where you are now, and I must walk my path with "watching from a distance" being my only connection to you.... I can do this, I know that, and only because I am learning more and more that that is the ultimate nature of love.