This is my first time writting on this forum, but from what I have read so far, all of you are very loving and kind and give great advice. So here goes:

I am an only child and have been single for all of my 32 yrs, Then, one day I met the most beautiful girl I have ever seen at work of all places! It was love at first sight for me. We emailed each other eveyday and then finally started dating. It was exciting to have a partner to so close at work and nearby always. She was my first love and sexual partner and we were together for 6 months. It was not all sunshine and rainbows, we argued over silly things but would always make up and keep the realtionship going. I will admit, being my first relationship I did not always know how to handle problems and she would often say “you do not know what it is like to be in a relationship”. This hurt a lot coming from someone I cared deeply for. Then one night we were out with friends and she started an argument in front over everyone (she was drunk) and told me that our relationship wasn’t going anywhere and left me and her friends drove her home. I tried everything to get her back from cards, to poems to emails at work but she didn’t seem the slightest bit interested in reconciliation. She was my first heartbreak…

Not even a few months later, my mom was rushed to the hospital with severe pain. She was on dialysis from kidney failure and caught an infection in her cath, tube (pretty common) but he was stubborn and didn’t want to go to the hospital right away, so she laid in her bed in pain for 12 hrs. When she was finally admitted, she received some pain medication and I went in to see her after she was comfortable. We chatted for awhile, and then she started throwing up suddenly. I turned her on her side and ran to get a nurse and while I was gone her heart stopped (her blood pressure was dangerously low). I pulled her up and looked into her eyes as her life slipped away. Luckily, they were able to revive her and she spent 3 days in the ICU fighting for her life (I never left her side during this time). Evemtually though, the infection turned to septic shock and I had to make the decison to end her life support. I watched her draw her last breaths and pass peacefully from me as I held her hand and told her I loved her.

Both of these traumatic events in my life happened in such a short span of time and I am having a terrible time processing them. I know when someone we love passes, we often try and replace them here in life, and that is why I fought so hard to get my Ex back. I think I only ended up pushing her away though as she is now with someone new. The comfort of her close presence at work which was once so loving, is now a painful reminder of the love that I lost. She even has pictures of her new BF on the walls of her cubicle, which were bare the whole time we dated….Its all very hard on the heart. The sad thing is, she was not even there for me when I was greiving over my mom, she met my mom and my mom really liked her. I didn’t even get a card from my Ex, only a few text mesages. So I learned a breakup CAN be quite permanent, just like death

I know I need to move on, but I feel I have somehow bundled these losses together in my mind and heart. There is a huge void that I carry now inside over losing the two most important women in my life so suddenly, who loved me and then left me all so suddenly. It is all very hard on the heart….