complexities and apparent contradictions

I find it near impossible most days to fully comprehend all that life is, all that relationships are, all that even one human is. It's so hard to fully grasp at any given moment all the joy and all the pain and all that just is, that even one person can cause, let alone a lifetime of people and events.

there are so many things, so often contracidtory things, that make up a person and what they mean to you.

I find myself today on a poetry website I helped run nearly a decade ago with my would be long-term girlfriend. I stopped regularlly visiting the website in 2003 due to the craziness of my life and problems with my girlfriend. We broke up in 2008 after 7years together. And I've been struggling to understand and come to terms with the relationship as a whole. It had it's moments of being extremely abusive (even physically) and there was a lot wrong with it. Many upon hearing of some of the horrors cannot understand how I could ever love such a person, some of that is my own skewed memories, but some of it lies in the condraticions that lie within people.  It was not all bad, not even by a long shot, but does the good outweigh the bad or visa versa?

it's so hard to sit here and read the poems that made me fall in love with the poet, to see the kindness and love in her soul, to know she was capable of such beauty and grace, and to hold all of that in mind when remembering the pain and misery I felt in direct contact with this same person. It's hard to hold the whole picture of a person.

She really helped me so much in certain areas of my life and yet set me back in several other areas of my life. Holding the wholeness of her, the years together, everything, leaves my heart near bursting. I don't know what to do, or say, or even feel. I want to cry and laugh and scream. I don't know where the fault lies, probably somewhere between us.

and yet here in the silence all I feel in the end is love. I know we should not be together again for I fear we at times bring out the worst in each other, but I wish her all the best. I hope all that is good in her continues to grow and all the negative fades. Part of me will always wonder where i'd be if she hadn't walked into my life, but for now I will take it all, good and bad, and use it to push myself to be better.

And I will make the effort in everything to see the whole of people because it's unfair on some level to not