First, let's get some things out of the way. Nobody's stalking anybody. Let's try an exercise; say someone you know really well is slandering both you and someone else you care about to a community you introduced this person to, a community which you care about deeply despite lack of recent involvement. Would you keep reading, just to see what else they say about you to your friends? Would you be able to ignore it?

When she complained to me about frankred sticking up for me (no it's really truly not me or her, and I don't know who it is, I just suspect) in her blog a little too vehemently for her liking, I recommended changing her username to one nobody, not even me would be able to guess, and told her I wasn't interested in reading it anyway, which was true because she had not yet started spewing all that lovely anger-stage vitriol and I was still going way, way out of my way to help her out however I could because I wanted to make her life as easy as possible while she healed from our breakup, and didn't ever want to give her any reason to start badmouthing me to our friends of either the local or online variety. I bent over backwards, giving her more rent / loan-repayment money than we agreed to because she needed it, I fixed her laptop, I helped her with her domains and email, I did whatever I could reasonably do. I did so much that her roommate, a good friend and former roommate of mine, advised me to stop, as she could tell that M needed more space from me in order to heal than she was allowing herself.

The trouble is, she changed her username to one which was ridiculously obvious to me, as it's a name from the same hit sitcom as the character after which her cat is named, then she proceeded to talk about me using a still-more-obvious alias (as I suggested to her, but not quite what I had in mind). My girlfriend began following her story first out of sincere pity for her situation, then out of sadistic addiction to seeing what the ex was going to say about her or I next. A morbid fascination. So she explained this in a comment posted to one of her diary entries, and since then the former drama teacher has breathlessly decried her ruthless "stalker", and the attention she so deeply desired flocked to her immediately as a result. I was saddened to see a friend cry "damn the man" in response, but disempowered by the fact that posting about it and starting some sort of ridiculous diary-section flame war while [her] emotions were running high would be no help to my cause, and would only incite her more. Then she moved accounts again but made her identity quite clear in her first post which hit the Diary page for all to see including me.

So I let her have Hulver for a while. You guys were there for me when I was dumped way back thousands of years ago on a community site far far away, and I can tell you that it helped me tremendously and I valued everyone's gracious and loving support, and I really truly sincerely wanted her to have that same kind of support, and it seems that you have not let her down. As someone who also cares about her and understands her well, thank you for that. I assure you it has meant the world to her. I'm sure me staying away from the site made it easier for her to receive that support, and I accept the consequence that I have lost regular readers but I sincerely hope I haven't lost my friends... I miss you guys dearly, and speak fondly and frequently of HusiStock Toronto whenever a variety of subjects arise in conversation. I hope very much to see you all again sometime soon.

And now, she seems to be in a happier situation, so I feel more comfortable speaking freely here about my life, secure knowing whether or not she reads it, I shouldn't have to worry about hurting her further simply by writing about how much I enjoy my life.

Now that we have those issues out of the way, I feel it's time for me to explain -- to both mutual friends and the sheerly ambivalent -- why I ended a three-year relationship:

I wasn't ever in love with her, and it just wasn't enough.

It was not a decision made lightly. I would lay in bed at night feeling that I was living a lie. I would look her in the eye and see my dishonesty with myself reflected in them. I felt this way the whole time we were together, surrendering to the happiness of her friendship, passion, giddy energy, and my sheer and honest gratitude for her having taken such great care of me when my father passed away. I convinced myself for a while or two that this was enough. That I was asking too much. But I longed to be in love. I wanted to feel that with her, and I tried sincerely to do so. It just never materialized. I kept going back into depressive periods of feeling like a fraud. I eventually decided that, since she took care of me while I was unemployed, I would take care of her until her business turned a profit. So I stuck by her. The problem is, it never turned a profit. Bless her richly talented heart, she just isn't cut out for running a business, and she finally decided to sell it. Then it wouldn't sell.

She was miserable, and I was feeling worse by the day. Parallel to this perditious spring, my friend turned unofficially adopted brother BB decided to move away to Phoenix for a year-and-a-half to get his Harley Davidson PhD. I started spending time with him whenever I could, which included hanging out with his friend the Mountain Hippie, who rapidly became my good friend as well. It also turned out that he lived right downtown in a cool apartment right above the local bar zone (literally upstairs), and needed a roommate. I discovered this at the height of my unhappiness as I was preparing for several weeks how to go about confronting the issue with M. It takes a lot of balls to break a sweet girl's heart for the selfish reason of needing something you can't have if you stay with her, and it took a long time to work up those balls with a delicate, respectful approach.

She was immediately grief-stricken. I was too, in my own way. It was sad to end something I did truly enjoy for the most part. We had a wonderful time learning from each other and growing tremendously with each others help and encouragement. We travelled to southern California, Tijuana, New York City several times, CheeseburgerBrown's magical schoolhouse of love in Guilford, Ontario, and the uniquely enchanting double-terminated quartz crystal mines in Herkimer, NY. She carried me through the illness and death of my father, she dragged me out of despair when I needed it most, and she encouraged and supported the development and production of my podcast. We hosted some great parties together. We had a group of good friends around us.

I moved out to the Mountain Hippie's apartment progressively over the course of several weeks until I was finally cleared out. To repay my debt at an accelerated pace, I paid her rent for several months as well as my own, because I could and she really needed it while she looked for a job. Thankfully she found a good one and it sounds like she loves it, which is awesome for her.

I don't like the way she treated my friend who was her roommate. M's accusations of withheld rent where totally unfounded and M treated her very unfairly, and I told her this myself the last time I spoke with M directly. I also discovered from my friend since she moved out of M's some of the ways in which my kindness had been abused without my knowledge since I left her. I really don't need to go into specifics, as it's all water under the bridge, but I decided it would be good for both of us if I stopped speaking to her. She needed to heal without having her wounds reopened every time she talked to me, and I needed to not be taken advantage of anymore.

So there you have it. That's the story of the end of Rizzo and Molasses. I'm sorry for everyone who liked us better together, and I'm sorry to have allowed so much controversy and unbalanced storytelling to continue unchallenged for so long, but I hope you will understand why I exercised such discretion in timing.

I have a lot more to share, and I want to begin posting it at least semi-regularly again. I'm already working on the next entry, but wanted to get this all out first, realizing it's hanging quite heavily over my reputation here. Do I still have any friends out there in HuSi-land? I hope so.