The progressing of this story has reached basically the present day. There are still blanks I can fill in, and I think I will add more pieces over time. Colour in a little more between the lines, tell more stories of Maddie.

However at the moment I am truly struggling with how I feel about where things are with her. As I’ve talked about recently both here and here, Maddie’s impending departure has caused me great happiness and deep sadness.

I am rarely finding myself with the ability to cope in recent weeks.

We had opportunity a week or two ago to spend an extended period of time together, the first time since she had told me about her secondment.

My car was in for servicing, and I had caught a cab into work – stupidly expensive as I don’t live that close to the CBD where I work. Maddie and I found ourselves texting during the day – she understood as she always did, that I was upset, and was checking in on me – as she always did.

She offered to come and drive me home, rather than catching another expensive cab home at the end of the day. She lives in the complete opposite direction from the city than I do, so it was really going out of her way to help out.

I think it was more a clever way of her checking up on me, and being able to look me in the eye whilst doing so.

As always, it was magnificent to see her – any time with her is precious, but I was honestly scared how I would feel sitting there with her for about an hour knowing how screwed up inside I felt, and how I knew she was going to probe into what was going on in my head.

My trouble is that I can never say no to her – so I found myself sitting next to her as she drove me home through the inner city streets, and the wider expanses of the middle suburbs of this city.

We talked of course, but she could tell I was “off” – and she knew immediately what was on my mind.

“You’re sad I’m going away for a while, aren’t you?”

I wasn’t – right from the start I was happy for the opportunity she was taking for herself and her career.

“I’m sad that you might not come back…”

No more words were spoken for some minutes. She reached over and grabbed my hand.

She just held my hand.

She’s always known when to speak, and when not to. She always understands the moments we have shared over 40 years.

Finally she spoke.

“Andrew, I am only going for two years, and while it’s true to say that I don’t know what will happen while I am over there, I plan to come home…”

I needed to hear that, but it still wasn’t a categorical statement that she would return.

I was shaking like a leaf. I loved being there with her, but I also wanted to get out. The flickering changes in my brain were like those lines you see when a video cassette was getting worn out.

Still all there, but hard to see, and hard to hear.

I was spinning. Spinning in pain.

“I really am happy for you that you’ve gotten this opportunity. I could never be sad that you are doing what you want to do…”

“But I’m breaking your heart, again – aren’t I?”

More silence.

“You’re not breaking my heart Maddie, I’m breaking my heart…you have your new man, and I know how good he is for you and that makes me happy. There’s just a part of me that has never managed to let you go.”

More silence.

“That’s the part of me that’s hurting…”

The rest of the journey was quiet, and soon we were in front of my house.

We were still holding hands.

I smiled at her and hopped out of the car, walking toward my front door.

I was trying not to look back, but from behind I heard her engine stop, and her door open then close.

I could hear her heels clicking up the front path behind me, and I could smell her perfume getting closer.

She grabbed my arm and turned me around to face her. She was crying.

We hugged. We just hugged and hugged and hugged.

“You’ve always been a part of my heart too Andrew…nothing can change that…”

It’s ironic that I chose “Don’t Stop The Car” as the music for my previous post. It’s taken me quite some days to write this one, and that last one was written the night before this trip home in her car.

I didn’t want this car ride to end, but I had to get out.

Yet, she still made the moment almost perfect.

The relationship between Maddie and myself has been pretty stable and strong in the years since my father passed away. I am still more than grateful for what she did for me that day, it actually makes me well up with even more love for her.

If that’s even possible.

We have a steady and honest friendship. We love each other, absolutely – but as has been the case for more than 40 years, there just never seems to be a time when we look each other in the eyes and kiss.

We never take that next step.

I think we are both scared to. I know that I am scared to. Neither of us want to wreck the amazing friendship we have.

Have we just come too far to ever get to that point?

I enjoy the time she and I spend together – our coffees and our lunches. Even the odd evening out here and there to catch a movie or some such. It’s a bond I don’t think will ever be broken.

As much as I do love her, I have spent the last few years trying to understand that love – am I just in love with the love I’ve always had for her, or is there something more?

The problem is, that the only answer I can form is that I don’t know.

I can’t ask her either – because of the not wanting to destroy the friendship thing. I’m caught between love………..and love.

I’ve been told by a lot of people in my life that sometimes I am just too nice to people. That women who aren’t 100% sure about me let go because they think I’m a nice guy, and that some other woman will snap me up so it’s okay to let me down if they aren’t sure.

I don’t know if that is wrong or right about me – but there is an element of it that makes sense.

If you have read right through this site, you’ll know that every woman who has come into my life – (including Maddie, to be completely fair) – has had a choice to make about me.

Every time that a woman has had to choose between me and someone else, the someone else has “won” every time. Sometime that “someone else” has been the choice of nobody at all.

But I never get chosen.

Jennifer? Despite everyone telling me that she liked me, she chose nobody.

Fiona? She chose to lead me on, while choosing the boyfriend she already had.

Shannon? Chose two other men over me, and denied she told me she loved me.

Amber? Chose her first love over me – though I always understood that one.

Sarah? Chose her abusive ex or nobody over me.

April? She chose to lead me on, and then stay with her soon-to-be husband.

The abusive no-name relationship? She chose me until she had milked me dry, then chose someone else.

Nadine? Chose someone new before ending it with me.

There’s definitely a pattern – when a choice needs to be made, that choice is never me. Even with Maddie, in the times we could have gotten together, she has chosen other men in her life.

The difference with Maddie is that she has always been open and respectful with my feelings – every time she’s known that she had to let me know about someone, she’s done it with grace and class.

But she’s never chosen me either.

I like to think I am a nice guy – so it would be easy to think it must be all me. I must be doing something wrong. If I am honest with myself, I am doing something wrong.

I always hold back, I always give them a reason to choose someone else.

I don’t know how to fix it, and I’m still alone.

All alone.

Maddie is with her new man, and she heads off in several months to her secondment overseas.

Once again I am left behind holding my heart in my hands. I am questioning how I feel.

Forty years of love for Maddie, and is my love now dying off? Would there ever be a chance again anyway?

I don’t want to stop, but I also want to be someone’s first choice…for the first time…

It is difficult for me to describe how Maddie made me feel by standing by my side and holding my hand at my father’s funeral.

The day was absolutely about him, and not about Maddie, but she made the most difficult and painful day of my life bearable. My father would have really liked Maddie – he would have appreciated her country upbringing and her kind heart.

That he never got to meet her is a shame – but obviously in looking back at all that I have written on this site, there are many reasons why that didn’t happen.

She didn’t have to come, but she did – just to look after me. It touched me when she asked, and it gave me great strength when I saw her drive into the cemetery that rainy day and park next to my car.

My son and I were still sitting in the car, keeping out of the rain. Maddie and my eyes caught each other, and she smiled a warm smile and I did my best to smile back through my pain.

We all stepped out, and I introduced Maddie to my son. Despite being autistic, he is actually good at meeting people, and he accepted her friendship at the first moment, and Maddie drew him in with her usual warmth.

It was actually the second time they had met, but he was only about two years old the first time, and had no memory of her. At this meeting he was 14, and Maddie later remarked that he was just how she remembered me at 14.

Just not as shy as I was.

As I introduced her to others, she just immediately connected with them and seemed immediately comfortable being around an entire group of people she didn’t know.

That was her superpower – drawing others into her space and making them feel welcome there, and she was very welcome in that time and in that place. She told everyone that she was there to support her friend.

Me.

Maddie is just magical like that – and though we weren’t together, she made me feel she was a partner in my pain. Her own father had died suddenly almost a decade earlier, and despite only meeting him once before at her 21st birthday party so many years before, I wanted to be there for her on her day of grief too.

They had a simple private family funeral with no guests beyond family, so I didn’t get the chance. Also, because it was so sudden, it would have been difficult to make it – but I did offer to come.

I like to think that she remembered my offer, and that that was why she asked to be at my side for my day of grief.

It was strange to feel so sad on that day, but uplifted by Maddie being there. She stood with me, but kept in the background of day, conscious of being a stranger at this gathering.

My mother and sisters asked later after she had left the wake, who Maddie was.

“You probably don’t remember me talking about her from my high school years, because it was so long ago, but she’s the one woman in my life who has always given a shit about me…and she wanted to be here and hold my hand…” was my answer.

Naturally, their next question was *who* Maddie was right now. It had been almost a decade since Nadine and I had broken up, and almost a decade since I had had someone serious in my life. I think they were all hoping I had found someone special again.

“Oh, she’s someone special, but we’re not like that. We’re way past that.”

I had always loved Maddie – but that was the day I really understood her. I always felt that I did, but even today, almost every time we interact she shows me more and more of herself, and more and more of who she is.

She is the guardian angel that someone sent into my life so long ago. Her spirit always uplifts me from whatever despair I am feeling at any given time in my life.

However, loving Maddie so much is a double edged sword.

I get to know her and love her, and share personal things with her. I don’t believe that the relationship we share is like any other kind of relationship either of us has ever been in.

But because we have never managed to be together – not even for a minute – the painful side of loving her is knowing that she finds the romantic love she needs from others.

I’ve always been happy for her when she is with someone, and I would never in a million years interfere with any relationship she was in, just to give myself a chance again.

I get to see her that happy, while I am often struggling with my own painful personal life. It often feels completely unfair that she gets to feel that, and I don’t.

The thing is, we both know we love each other.

We also know that we are both too special to each other to ever wreck what we do have.

That’s the dichotomy of us.

Love without love. It is so powerful, but while I understand where we stand, sometimes I need more.

So much more.

My father battled with cancer for the last ten years of his life, and as a family we were devastated when he finally left this world.

At diagnosis we were given five years of life expectancy, so to get double that was a blessing that we cherished greatly. Every single day, week, month, and year after that initial five year prognosis was time we took to make sure we built as many memories and moments that we could.

It was clear for some months that the end was near – yet it was still a shock when the moment comes.

When that day finally came, the world was in the midst of the COVID pandemic, when there were restrictions on the number of people who could attend many events, including funerals.

Dad was a well-known figure in our home town, and we expected a large number of people would want to fill the limited ranks of mourners allowed to attend. Indeed, we heard from many people, and it broke our hearts to turn so many away.

We eventually settled on immediate family and as many of his closest friends we could fit into the allowed quota, and it wasn’t difficult to fill.

For my son, it was the first time he had lost a family member, and preparing him for the funeral was a difficult exercise in managing emotions.

The night before Dad’s funeral, a familiar number appeared on my phone.

Maddie.

She had already shown a great deal of love and support in the week between Dad’s passing and his funeral – because of course she did – but what she asked me during that phone call blew me away.

“Andrew, if possible I’d love to come tomorrow, to support you? I know you’re taking this pretty hard, and I just want to be there for you.”

I was frozen, briefly.

I thought about how the quota was already full, but thinking quickly – (and perhaps a little bit selfishly) – I answered.

“Maddie, the quota is full, but if you want to come, you’re coming. I’ll make sure they don’t count too carefully. I can’t wait to see you, and thank you for caring, like you always have.”

It rained a little during the funeral, good for hiding tears.

Maddie of course saw each each and every tear, and held my hand the entire time.

She had never met any of my family before that day, so I was getting a few odd looks and I would have some explaining to do later – but she was made welcome by everyone.

She looked impeccable, shining as much as one could in a black dress on a rainy day.

She stuck with me during the wake, and stayed as long as she possibly could – making sure that I was okay every step of the way.

I wasn’t, but having her there was something that I will never forget. To have her there on the saddest day of my life was immeasurably valuable to me.

I walked her to her car, and we chatted quietly for a few minutes – we hadn’t actually seen each other for almost a year, thanks to COVID. She kissed me on each cheek, and then gave me a little peck on the lips.

I shouldn’t have been happy, but I was smiling like an idiot.

I watched this magical woman drive off into the distance before heading back inside.

Now, time to explain.

The entire world changed in 2020, with the onset of the COVID pandemic. Lives changed, people were artificially kept away from each other for long periods of time.

I was someone who absolutely supported the distance we were made to keep from other people – one only has to look at how the United States failed to cope in the early days of the pandemic.

Just how many people died there, and were buried in mass graves due to the sheer number of people succumbing to the virus – I didn’t need to be convinced beyond that.

While I had been holding back somewhat from Maddie for a good two-and-a-half years by this time, we were still in touch and still caught up for lunch every now and then. We still loved being around each other.

On a personal level, my employer at the time didn’t really have a specific policy on working in the office or working from home for at least six months into the pandemic. Without one, we just started following the government directive of “…if you can work from home, work from home…”

I could, and I did.

Aside from grocery shopping and visits to the doctor, I didn’t leave the house for basically three months. Despite my employer not having a policy, my department started running with its own policy and after those first three months, I started going into the office once a week.

It was nice to escape a little bit, because being at home was hard work – even for an introvert like me.

For Maddie, she was in a similar boat – mostly able to work from home, but coming into the office a fair bit more than I was.

But because of all the restrictions, catching up for lunch was – (technically) – against the law, and it had been nearly six months since we had. Her work sometimes takes her away from the city for even weeks at a time, but even when she wasn’t away we still couldn’t.

The lock-downs also broke down her relationship. He apparently wasn’t a believer in those lock-downs, and got really upset that Maddie wouldn’t allow him to come over to her house.

Like me, Maddie was a believer in the policies of social isolation.

All of a sudden, we found ourselves talking online…a lot.

She didn’t have to be sensitive to a partner since that had ended, and I was emotionally very drained from being home so much and not connecting with anyone.

As such, as much as I was still in the “hold back from Maddie” space, that chance to connect with anyone was just what I needed. That it was Maddie wasn’t necessarily the best choice for me at the time, but it wasn’t a problem either.

It was fantastic to connect again, and we probably chatted on Zoom at least a couple of times a week for months and months – even when the restrictions began to ease a little.

Maddie was back in my heart, and later that year when my father died – (despite not actually needing convincing) – she showed me once and for all just how wonderful she was.

Part of deciding to step away from Maddie a little was the need to find a way to fill that gap in my life that she had always filled.

I was still happy being single, but at times we were almost a surrogate partner for each other. We would talk about things that were personal – (not intimate necessarily) – to give each other something of a sounding board for things going on in our lives.

Having decided to take my romantic focus away from her, it was difficult to adjust to not having that regular connection.

I didn’t tell her that I was pulling back – the friendship was as strong as it had ever been, but for my own sake, I had to communicate a little less.

There was no way at all that I was going to cut her off, and there were still text messages and phone calls from time to time. I just deliberately did it less.

We still did our catch up lunches from time to time, but even those I tried to organise less regularly.

I never sensed that she was worried for our friendship or concerned that I was contacting her somewhat less often – but the dynamic did change a little. The things we talked about were less personal than before, but we both knew that the other would always be there when needed.

Maddie did enter a relationship with a guy – (I never met this one) – and she did talk about him from time to time – however I never got the feeling from her that she thought he would be the “forever guy” – it just sounded like companionship rather than love.

I wished for more than that for her – she deserved a “forever guy”.

I just couldn’t put myself in that position again, I couldn’t give her the feeling that that was what I was interested in – and at that time I wasn’t.

My decision to step back from her romantically was a decision I was completely comfortable with, and I didn’t want to compromise the process I was going through within myself by complicating it with feelings for Maddie again.

I still watched her with some envy, but I was feeling better about life than I had for a long time.

There were a few women drifting in and out of my view, but nobody really caught my eye enough to push anything serious with them.

I was completely okay with that.

Maddie and I never lost contact, but this was the most distant we had been for some time. I was happy for me for her to have some time to look the other way too.

I did miss her, and I also didn’t.

Did I ever really stop loving her though?

No.