I barricaded myself and stared out the window, without seeing anything but my own unhappiness.
— Thomas Bernhard

I guess I was right. I didn't want to be and I hate myself for it but I don't know how to let myself be happy anymore.

Erica and I had been taking steps to rebuild our relationship in recent weeks and things were going seemingly okay. And then we had a fight – already a difficult thing to do effectively over such a distance – and for a couple of days we went round and round in a big jumbled mess of misunderstanding each other. I went into what we have come to call a spiral where I get trapped by my negative view of myself and it's really hard to escape from. It started affecting me physically and I could barely think straight. I eventually got so overwhelmed that, without really thinking about it, I broke things off again.

The stupid part about it is that it was an emotional, knee-jerk reaction that came immediately in the wake of telling someone else not to make an emotional, knee-jerk reaction. But in the moment, I simply couldn't handle the flood of emotions that was washing over me and I bailed out.

I'm an idiot. I set fire to a really good relationship with a woman whom I loved and who loved me more than I deserve. The last one I'll ever have. I'm not doing this again.