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We tell each other we're sorry for the things I feel, and mean it. Crying now, this wasn't what either of us expected. I have ambushed her with covert emotions, and now embarrassed apologies fly back and forth; hasty retractions from a revelation far too slow. My heart is broken, and I've only myself to blame; leading myself into traps at every turn.

Contrition is not enough now, as I pick over the broken remains of the scene. For a moment there was peace in ignorance, but now answers drown my hope. She promises there won't be an impact, but too late; the speeding bullet of my fears lights up my synapses. “I love you, just not in the way you want” signals that I've done it to myself again, diving into circumstances, mistaken.

With the clarity of hindsight I tear myself apart, “I should have known”. She promises she won't let it change things, and I believe her, but it has already changed me. This inexhaustible love is exhausting me, and I have no more revisions left to make. I have run through every hypothetical; my analytical love drives me onwards like Sisyphus.

Certainty is a wound, re-opening scars I had long thought closed. Two years of doubt laid to rest, with the epitaph of 'it would never have worked'. I lie to myself to keep my sanity, claiming again and again that I could have said something, when I never did. I could have reached across the chasm between us, only to look down and find it wider than I ever thought possible. Like Nietzsche, the abyss stares into me, and I am forced to conclude that there was nothing I could have done.

My choices are the devil and the deep blue sea, and in this zugzwang state I wonder: will it always be like this? Holding those three words in front of me like a shield, and failing. I wield 'I love you' like a talisman, a weapon to break my heart and others. This is the purest feeling I have ever felt, so how can it be submerged in this miasma of complexity?

I awaited a movie script ending, with an upbeat, sensitive song over ending credits as we kissed in the rain. This wasn't supposed to happen, it's not fashionable to be broken-hearted any more. No last-minute desperate chases, no climactic declarations, just a long, drawn-out monologue, a pathetic aping of romance as seen on silver screen. I am not ruggedly handsome, and she is not going weak at the knees – surely, a miscasting?