I'll tell you a secret, my friend, I read, and...like always, I already knew that I had made my choice, subconsciously, to set aside the past. XXI, The World. The end of a cycle, and wish fulfillment, if you believe in that random scraps of paper have any meaning. There were days where I was sure I'd find nothing else that could replace what I felt before. Then again, they say your first love always feels like your last, and your last love, your first. And, it's just different each time. But I don't know what this feeling is, just quite yet. No matter what, I still want to be able to feel incandescent, to feel like every part of me could compete with radiating the sun's heat and win - and I think only then will the past not echo in moments, and I'm afraid that that will never happen..even though I'm pretty sure it will.

They never talk about the different ways you feel love, that getting swept away off your feet, that idealized romantic love that people seem to hold up as the standard for true love, isn't the best kind of love (nor true) for some people, that some people feel love in a quiet, content lightness that doesn't need to burn through every vein in your body to feel right, that going from a burn like that to emptiness is far too easy if the other person forgets, or lies, that there are so many different types of love in this world that can't be categorized unless you've felt it yourself, that..there are so many things that you think you know but you just don't, when you're twenty-two.

This feels as natural as breathing, for the first time, and yet...love. Love terrifies me these days and I'm not quite sure why. I know I love him already as a friend, but not quite in love yet. Time, space, and place, and later things to worry about. Like distance. And with each step into work that I go, the growing realization that one day I might be forced to choose in a way that I don't want to. Because no matter what, I still have things I want to do in life that are related to transportation and rail and I need to do it, but..I think if I ever spend an extended amount of time with him, I won't be able to give that up either. But I think there's a way I can do this. Maybe. I also know that if I had to pick between the two...no matter what, I will always pick transit and rail, for the greater good.

It's funny, arguing with him about what I should pick in a hypothetical situation. The past is the past, but I feel like in some ways, it always overlays what we talk. That he would pick love, and people, and another's dream, and that I would pick my own dream, in almost a reversal of what was before. We learn from the experiences that shape us, and what we hold most important, I suppose.

Maybe, like always, I'm afraid of things falling apart like they always have in the past - I don't think I can handle letting in another person in and then getting left emotionally behind too many more times, and before, when there was nothing but words and Skype, it was harder to miss a smile and kisses and being held and talking until dawn, and now, distance.

紅線. Somehow, this time, it's different, and I know that deep down inside, whether I can explain it or not, and I just have to trust that feeling. It'll be okay. And if not, well, such is.