It's been almost three years now since you broke up with me. And I haven't really moved on yet, not in the way I'd want to have moved on.

It pisses me off to admit this, because as it stands now, I have no feelings for you as you were. In other words, I don't consider you the lost love of my life. I say that because it is painful that you had the effect on me you did. The effect being that I haven't been able to give my heart fully to or trust anyone intimately since you left me. So, even though you are not the love of my life, you continue to cast a shadow on my ability to meet that love, if there is such a person out there.

I've tried. I've tried a lot. But maybe I haven't tried enough. Or maybe the purpose of moving on is not "trying" to move on. You move on when you become fully aware that someone you loved no longer possesses the power to make your heart stop in its tracks, to make your life come to a standstill when you recall how much you loved him, but also the power to prevent your heart from opening to the others who might be out there in that mythical "out there" waiting for love.

You said I was the love of your life. You said you could not imagine a yesterday, a today, or a tomorrow without me in your life. And then, the first time things got rocky, you were gone. And I never saw your face again. You may as well have disappeared off the face of the earth. It is probably best. I don't know what I would do or what it would do to me were I ever to run into you again.

I don't even know where you are at this moment. You could be a few miles away; you could be on another continent. I will never know. All I know is that I miss you. Or, more accurately, I miss tremendously what you gave to me. And I miss what you represented to me: the fact that there could be someone else in the world who loved me, for a while, as much as I loved him. That harmony doesn't come along very often in a lifetime, and when it does, it's the most magical, mind-blowing thing in the universe.

And I always end up looking for that kind of harmony again, hoping it will be the answer. That it will make me as happy as I was sometimes when I was with you. But you can't look for those forces. They don't let themselves be found. All you can do is be ready for them when they come looking for you.

And if they find you when you are downhearted, if they find you when you are angry, if they find you when you are bitter, if they find you when you are dejected, if they find you when you have a wall erected around you defying anyone to come near you, they will take a quick look at you, but they will jot a disapproving checkmark on their clipboard and move on to someone more worthy of their gift. And you will never even know they were there. You will never even know they were there.

And that is the lesson I am still trying to learn after all this time of not being with you. I am still trying to open my heart. I am still trying just to be open, like redwood trees to the wind and the rain, like birds that land on telephone wires and trust in gravity to hold them up. That is all anyone can do.

I hope that wherever you are, Jim, my love, you are open. And happy.

Frank.