The answer is,  it may make me a fool,  but I don't know how to cut Eric out of me. And I genuinely doubt I could wuthout causing irreparable harm to the both of us....

And sometimes, it's so hard hearing what's inside of him and feel it inside me as if it were my own hurts. And right now,  he's hurting bad again and he's so anxious and sad and just.... Heartbroken over just how fucked up everything is and how far he is from what he wants and where he hoped to be right now.

And I just want to hug him when he's in this sort of state. (and he IS in quite the state right now...last day or so....)  Whenever I feel that sadness and hurt and emptiness and yearning and fear in him,  I just hold him til the hurting starts to heal and then ask him what it is needs fixing and how we're going to do it.

It makes me feel like I can't breathe and I'm going to drown choking on his emotions when they get the way they've been lately....

But even if I did know how to shut him out,  I never could while he's this bereft inaide.... My reasons for trying to go are all about not believing he cares about me and feeling that things are just too complicated now this last year and I refuse to put him in the middle between me and people/things that he deeply cares about.  But I still love him all the same and I want him to have and hold onto the happiness he seeks (even if I don't know what that is)  and it kills me to feel him as gutted as he is - the last thing I coild do with him in that state is diminish the bond and the love/strength he can find from it.....

So I'll not be doing anything drastic or precipitous. Not at this time. Because he's currently hurting,  and I couldn't do anything to make that worse or make it permanent for him....  I'm not a cruel person,  despite my strict loyalty to justice and truth.  And it's not in me to hurt him worse while he's already hurring so.

What I am gonna do now is keep listening to Penny & Sparrow,  put the kettle on for a cuppa tea,  eat some espresso sea salt alpine cheddar cheese,  then go back to reading my book.  (The Graveyard Book,  by Neil Gaiman. Hal told me I had to read it when I stole him and Crissy to go wandering Forest Hill cemetery to look at some flowering trees a few weeks ago when he randomly found me at Farmer's Market.  When I got home,  I discovered I already had it and it was on my tbr shelf right by my bed. Today it felt like what I wanted to read in one sitting.)

I do hope something shifts for Eric soon though. For his sake.  He's suffering a lot again just now,  poor love....