I can't let go

Hi everyone! I hope you are doing fine.

I am not that ok, and I really need to vent.

Right before the pandemic hit, I had an affair and I fall in love real bad with this guy. We were a thing for a couple of months, he knew that I was not single, and for the most part he didnt seem to care, but I did. Every single time that we met I told him it was the last time, every time it was a fake goodbye, until the quarantine was stablished in our city, and that made the last goodbye the real one. Bottom line it was like the situation took the decision for me, it hurt a lot, for a while we keep texting, I want to believe we become real friends, he was a huge part of my life, but he also was a big source of anxiety. My relationship was never bad, I think it had nothing to do with it, I now believe I am just capable of loving multiple people, and it's hard because my education never told me that was acceptable or even possible. He had to move back to his home town because of the pandemic, so we started growing apart, about a year later we stopped talking, and now I feel that I dont even noticed how it happened. I went back to therapy for some unrelated issues, and he started to loose relevance in my mind, I isolated myself and stopped talking almost every friendo I had, in the moment I didnt noticed, I was in a really bad place. This lasted almost another year, till a few months ago, I saw on instagram he is dating someone, it broke my heart, and at the same time it kind of wake me up, thats when I realized that we stopped being friends, and my feelings for him resurfaced. I dont regret my decision, I know leaving him was the right thing to do, I value my relationship and I dont want to risk it ever again, but my feelings dont go away, I think I love him and I dont know what to do about it, I want us to be friends again but I dont know if he would be open to that, besides he now lives in another city and is probably bot coming back, he has a girlfriend, and I dont want to seem like an obstacle, I dont want to be between them, I just feel like I want some sort of closeness. Sometimes I feel like I am just obsessed with him, not really in love, but other times it feels like something really authentic, I remember our time toghether like something so precious that I convince myself it is indeed love.

Yesterday I saw my only friend that knows about this, she is a mutual friend, and she is still close to him, I tried not to bring him up, but it was unavoidable at some point, the things that she told me about him sound like he has changed a lot in this two years, knowing this hurt me, I felt like all this time I have been thinking about someone that is gone.

I am so confused, I dont know what to do about this feelings, I want peace, but I dont want to let him go.