Sorry I was a lot yesterday. There was just a lot of anxiety and turbulence inside me about things. 

It upset me to think that he might feel rejected by me the way things are now -- because that's not what's going on or what's ever been going on.  And the realization that could be how he understands what's been going on had me really distraught. I don't know why it was bothering me so badly all of a sudden. It just suddenly was bothering me so much I couldn't think or feel about anything else other than fixing that misperception.  It's not that I don't want him, there's never been such a time. It's that since October 2018 I've considered myself to be an option made toxic for him. It's not his fault and it's not his choices that made it happen, but I don't see how me being in his life doesn't create tension and disappointment and rejection in him given the difficulties raised by the ostra and my strict adherence to respecting boundaries of that sort. And it's not something I can do anything to alter or change or make better -- I can't remove the ostra and it's a deep level instinctual response in my soul that you don't transgress a boundary someone else puts up. Their boundaries are a matter of their free will, and free will is sacrosanct. It's not without consequences, but it is sacrosanct. It doesn't MATTER if the fear and defensiveness was rational or irrational, if it's determined that you're a danger to them and someone chooses ostra as the means of protection then you obey. You go into exile or you take the cup of hemlock because it's not for you to determine if you're actually causing the damage they claim, it's for you to accept that the individual or community feels you are a threat to them. Rightly or wrongly, they feel threatened and have chosen ostra as the way to deal with that. It's like, if someone tells you that your actions hurt them, it's not for you to say 'well i wouldn't be hurt by it" or "no sane person would be hurt by that" it's for you to acknowledge you caused them hurt and to apologize and if it was accidental tell them so and then ask how to avoid such hurt in the future.  I get that my response to ostra doesn't make sense to a modern perspective, but I don't know any other way to respond than polite wary distance and being careful not to transgress the boundaries others have made. And that doesn't provide support and growth to someone when it's his own sister and everything he creates with his best friends and passion project that you can't have any response except polite distance. I don't expect or ask him not to care about his own sister or about his band but I can't feel anything regarding either of them due to the ostra. And anyone would be hurt when people/things that they love intensely are rejected and not appreciated. And I can't alter this because it's a boundary that isn't mine and that I can't now cross. It's why his sister's choices and actions in 2018 put him in the middle and make it his pain and his suffering that is the price of her choices. 

And it's because he gets caught in the middle and hurt by those choices and the consequences of them  that I have viewed myself as a toxic option for him ever since October 2018. It's not me rejecting him, it's that I don't want to be a source of pain or hurt to him. And it seemed to me that if I removed myself from his options then the risk of him being hurt that way would go away, he can't be hurt by my polite distance and indifference to people/collectives he cares dearly about if I'm not in his life. And that made sense to me because he's not the sort to lack for options, he's good looking and talented and smart and funny and there are plenty of women out there ready to date him and give him needed ego boosts and be besties with his sister and love everything his band does. Women who don't have this complication created by a defensive response to a truth someone didn't want to hear that can only hurt him being in the middle of it. I didn't think he'd miss me given he has so many potential options. I assumed that. 

Maybe I shouldn't have assumed that. Maybe I should have understood that the bond and the memories and the longing and all the deep love runs both ways. But I didn't realize or think of that when I assumed the kindest thing for me to do was to let him go completely and that would be the best way for me to be sure I wouldn't hurt him with my enforced indifference respect for boundaries other made. I didn't realize at that point that the tension in a string is a force felt equally on both ends it is secured to and that he would hurt as deeply as me over any separation or absence or inability to reach me.  I genuinely thought it was only me I was hurting in trying to let him go and that for him I was giving him a freedom to take any other opportunities he might desire, ones that weren't already known to be complicated by things that would hurt him. I didn't ask him what he desired, I assumed that whatever he desired he could more easily find it if I were not a stumbling block that could only cause him hurt by my presence.

It's only fairly recently, since early Sept 2021 when I was watching the video for No One Will Miss Me, that I realized that in trying to save him from being hurt by choices he never made but which have consequences that put him in the middle I had caused him the much deeper hurts by making me unreachable and absent from his inner self and taking away from him every avenue he'd finally found this life to reach me in the real world. I genuinely hadn't realized until then that my absence and not being able to reach me and not getting a response from me could be hurting him and upsetting him far worse than dealing with the mess made in 2018. My conscience still weighs on me over having hurt him and I don't know what to do or how to make it better.... The obvious answer would be that if my absence upsets and hurts him, then it is my presence that can make things better and help us find paths toward healing. But is that really a good answer or is it just what my selfish longing WANTS to be the answer? How can I be sure that's an objectively good answer as opposed to a subjectively biased whim of what I WANT to do? And how do I handle the fact that my presence will still make tension that he's stuck in the center of because of the choices made in October 2018? How can I decide how to act if it seems to me that both my absence and my presence are going to be a source of hurt to him in present circumstances? How do I choose which will upset him more and be harder for him?

And so I decided that the third path was that it isn't my choice. That if nothing I can do can keep him from being hurt caught in the crossfire of other people's choices, then I want him to have a say and a choice about what it is that he wants and needs and desires most. Because he can know what cuts him deepest and hurts worse in a way that nobody outside of him can know. And it's his life path, not mine or his sister's or anyone else's that is at stake -- it's his happiness HE seeks for himself and his life that I want him to be able to make his. And I can't do that if I try to assume and guess and make choices for him without asking him what it is he wants. No more than me assuming that removing myself from his options could be beneficial for him reaching the happiness he seeks. Which is when I decided that if I can't trust my own choices not to cause him harm, then I'd stay put and move neither closer nor further until I understand what it is HE desires and what HIS choices are and what matters most to HIM. Because knowing that makes all the difference to me in how I can choose a path to cause him the least hurt and the least harm that it's in my power to choose.

Yesterday, I was just really upset all over again that I can't seem to see or find a way for me to be a source of goodness in his life. All I can see right now are ways that I can upset or harm him whether by my absence or my presence. And it seems like all my absences hurt him far worse than my presence ever could but I'm just not certain that's true and he's already been hurt and upset and sad enough that the last thing I want to do is assume something that would would selfishly make me happy but would make things harder for him.... And I hate feeling stuck and that I can't do anything right no matter how hard I try to find the way through to cause the least harm and create the most good. 

If I listened solely to my own heart and my own desire and my own needs, I'd just say "fuck everything else. I just want him in whatever way I can have him in my life" and I'd add back his social media accounts so I could see him whenever he chooses to share anything and I'd take every opportunity I could make to be wherever he is and to see him again. And if given a chance, I'd hug him tightly not let go until I was certain he understood that as far as I'm concerned there's nothing about him that I reject, nothing about him that I don't want, nothing about him that makes me anything but happy. That's what my heart tells me to do and keeps insisting is the only right way out, to choose him in any and every capacity and way that i can have him in my life.

But I don't know if that's even something he wants or would choose. Maybe acting on the impulse of my heart's urging would just be acting further on my own assumptions, a course of choice making that hasn't gone well in dealing with him. Every time I run on a choice because of my assumptions, I seem to accidentally hurt him and so I've decided that in anything that affects the both of us it's important we make choices together -- it's our bond not my bond. The choices are about both of us and need to be made by both of us and take both of us into account. Which is why I'm waiting to learn from him what it is HE wants for himself and his own happiness in this life.

I know there's a way out or through, there always is. I just don't know how I should act given I can't tell if my absence or my presence would cause more hurt to him and that I don't know what it is he truly desires. I need to know that answer as to what it is he truly wants for himself for me to figure out my best course forward regarding Eric.