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A BETTER GOODBYE (1-2 MINS): I always respected and understood your choices. A different outcome was never possible, not even in my mind, let alone yours. But I think you could have made all the same ones, and found a way to treat me with respect and care at the end. I know you were also navigating this for the first time, but the impact on me of the way things were done has been significant.

I was originally going to write something specific about what I'd have done were the roles reversed - but there's little point. The way I'd have acted, the proper closing I'd have given, even if I'd made all the same overall choices, are based on the respect you'd deserve, given what you meant to me. But we're different people, with different fears and reactions, and, while at the time I couldn't have chosen between us on ``who felt more'', this assumes everyone's like me, and that something like this couldn't have happened, nor felt the way it did, if it had not been real and of great value.

I've never contested we had to say Goodbye, but being told by people who don't know me, nor the true situation, what you must do, and how you must do it, does not automatically make them right. It was not your choices that hurt the most - you were right to make them - it was that it did not hurt you to hurt me. (BACK)

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