I look back at all of the times I write here in anger and no matter what, you've managed to surprise me.

Thank you for being patient.

I won't tell you this, but while you were gone away from civilization, I think I realized that no matter what our future is, you'll always have made me find a foundation to not need other people off of, and to get my own life together, and to understand why I need to, even if I'm constantly fighting it out of instinct.

Thank you for being understanding.

I'm trying, and I need to stop being afraid that you will be like all the others, because you're not. And though I might struggle with that, I think I can always step back from my almost blinding, stupidly angry fears after a little bit of thinking. I think, though, and sometimes, before I think, I don't.

Thank you for caring about me more than I know how to accept.

So on this eve of thanksgiving, while I'm grateful for all of my friends (from the crazy support who's carried my ass to Gold V to the ones far away in countries fifteen hours away by flight) and my family (however silly they may be), I'm once again writing these words to myself,  a eulogy to my own bitterness and impatience, thanking you and knowing you won't ever see it, since you respect my privacy, but knowing that I need to sort out these words in my head into inelegant text as a quiet apology to everything i've written as I try to figure out how life and my head and my stupid heart works.

"I met his eyes at last, startled, apprehensive - but I did not see in his gaze the grasping desperation of zalend, or the poetic passion of rafalle. It was the warm and steadfast love of human to human, necessary and infinite as light and air."

Nothing brilliant, nothing burning, just a steady, quiet (okay maybe pretty loud), laughing constant in my life. Granted, my life brings change now, and I'm not sure how long I can last anymore in this space in between because real life and real worries is hard, but I'll try because this feels real. We'll try? I think, this concept of "we" is actually, truly strange to me, even though I've been dating off and on for the past ~6 years now. Love as a human, rather than in the gloriousness of written prose and cinematic staging, is quite strange indeed.

Can I please get a job already? I'll deal with change, if need be, but floating in this in-between space frightens me. As does the fact my !#(#_)@#)!2 applications submitted recommendation requests that I'm not ready to submit everything for yet. The terror.