Today was probably one of that hardest I've had to endure in the last many years.
Today I said goodbye to someone I had known since I was 21; she was from a dark time of my life.
There have been times in my life that have been very very dark, where the memories I have of them are cornered with black haze -- those were the times where I found myself with a noose over my neck and nowhere to go but to step off.
I met her when I was not long out of the psychiatric ward. Conversation was hard for me at the time so I used the internet as a way to bypass the communication difficulty. I could type instead of talking.
We met on the backwaters of the Internet, we talked, and eventually, back before the days of streaming video it was a picture swap.
I remember when she showed me hers, I thought she was trying to pull me a fast one -- what she showed me was clearly a beautiful model and a fake picture.
Anyway, it was cleared later that it was her, and because I scoffed at her she went into the huff.
We made good friends over the next few years, yes, I always wanted to date her but clearly in my mind this girl was in the premier league and I was playing Sunday league football.
So I had coined her as a friend -- nothing more, nothing less.
We remained friends for 24 years. She was always there; in the dark and in the light -- basking with me when it was light and huddling for cover when the feelings were dark.
She never judged, she never waved her waggly finger at me in disappointment, she just sat with me through everything.
What I liked about her most is that she appealed to my wild side.
I am wild
And you're all going to meet that side of me soon -- there's a side of me that throws caution to the wind and goes YOLO with the flow and I've always thrived in that atmosphere.
She does too -- she is completely nuts, yet has been tamed over the years through partner and child, but there will always be that part of her that thrives in the wild, like me.
Our first ever conversation on video was her screaming, "Oranges!" at me on camera and giggling loudly. When we were young.
I always loved how crazy and free she was and how that matched my energy, and she was the first woman I ever felt safe to be truly myself around.
Until of course I met my wife. My wife showed me a level of safety I'd never had before.
We remained friends for a long time.
But now is time for a new chapter of my life.
I'm headed into super-abundance and I feel having her in it will only complicate my life ten fold.
Over the last several years she has been asking me to meet her in London in a hotel, and me, pretending to be naïve like I always do, have asked if there's room for my wife and kid in those hotels? They'd all love to meet her!
Her relationship isn't as wholesome as mine is, and whilst I've always tried to steer her back to thinking about her family, I sometimes feel that by just being around her I'm doing her more harm than good.
She was the only one that popped up and said hi to me on Facebook when no-one else cared, for many years.
Back when I was in my twenties before I met my wife I would have been at that hotel before she even finished asking me.
Now? I've built a life for myself, a home for myself, I have a wife that can't live without me, and I couldn't live without my wife -- we not only work together but we're dependant on each other.
And all the hardship we've faced over the last several years; the failed projects, me being unemployed, having hardly any money to live on -- we still got up together, happy faces, hugged each other in the morning and got on with it.
And our lives are about to be changed soon immeasurably.
I had to say goodbye to her, because I'm about to get very wild, and that's an environment she would absolutely thrive in around me for all the completely wrong reasons.
And I do this not out of malice, but love and care for her family, and the needs of her sect.
I don't take this decision lightly at all, and it's one I hate to do.
I will miss her forever.
But today, I'm throwing my friend on The Flame.
