There were some things I never talked about to anyone else, even if I wanted to, because they were private. Illogical thoughts and emotions I could recognize, and so they got filed away, somewhere into the subconscious. And there are things I think I still will never talk too much about, because it's in the past, but I think I need to get it out.

Once upon a time, there was a boy and a girl. He laughed and talked about a future where they took walks in the park, and they were lao puo and lao gong, and she dreamed of quiet days where their daughter had the same slow smile and the other two were as fails with a staff as they could be. There was a future, and there was a present, but then again, there was a lot in between that future and the present. Sometimes I think it's ironic when I look back at the way we talked about things - he wanted to just skip forward to that future, and I wanted the present - perhaps, in the end, subconsciously, we knew that in that in between things would fall apart.

I think in some ways, the day I decided to give up on him was also the day I decided that loving myself would always be more important than loving someone else, and I'm not sure that that's a good thing to learn, but it is some measure of independence. There's still that fear of falling, that I'll go from being faves to nothing again, but..at the same time. And there's still a part of me that loves what was promised and that dream, because I spent so long surviving in it, and once you learn to love something, I think it's really hard to learn to unlove it, if you truly did, if not impossible, but I've known for a very, very, long time also that dreams were never enough for reality, and that half of the happiness I gained in that time also felt better because there was so much emotional pain, and that I'll never want it back, even if that happiness is there, because there's nothing that can ever erase that knowledge or the string of broken promises and that I loved myself enough to walk away. But that emotional pull is still there, and while resisting is easy, I wish he'd just acknowledge that at points and just not bring up that we have a past or regrets. 

I spent so long running in the past year, both from truths that I knew about myself and from someone who offered friendship and now love freely, because I don't think I know how to accept it. Perhaps it is true that you learn the most about love when it's in a method you don't understand yet - the first (well, I don't ever think he was the first other than in physical stuff) taught me what not to do, the second, how to love..and now. For the first time I don't think love is enough to describe what I feel, yet at the same time, I think I'm afraid. I'm afraid to be open, afraid to do something wrong, and I don't know. Three out of three told me they wanted a future with me, of the long run...and the only one I've ever trusted and not been skeptical of is this one.