I've debated whether I should say anything at all, but...

I'm not sure that saying anything will mean much at all at this point but, the willingness of yourself that you put that amount of your inner pain for us to know about, is very brave of you, and I'm heartbroken by every bit of those segments of your past. I'm hoping that you don't put so much blame on those events on yourself, despite the way it seemingly looks.

Not to dismiss the relationship you ended up forming with this gal, because you both had previous histories to try and navigate through. You have survived your trials so far , and we are happy that you have. Please keep being Markaba, because that's a part of the world that the world needs. (even if you butt some heads here a little harder than some would want)

Otherwise, I hope you can see that you didn't make that choice, and also the fact that you felt you needed to go away for a while didn't in any way singularly push your friend into making the difficult choice she did.

- Smiles -

(In other words please don't follow that path. Even though there are times when I too have a hard time not following that similar path.)