Violated.

It feels as though someone has grabbed hold of my heart and is holding onto it so roughly that it can't beat. This is why I stay away from people. Complications. No matter the age there are always complications and drama. I can pity the characters in my books as I watch them stumble through life, get angry at them for making wrong turns and stupid decisions, I can do that all in the safety of my own bed. Away from all the stumbling and wrong turns and bad decisions. I got sucked in, it isn't Matt's fault, well okay it is partly Matt's fault for being so god damned sweet and romantic but it was bound to happen eventually. Can't hide from the real world forever, which is exactly what I have been doing since Jessie died. I saw too much humanity that week, I broke so many hearts, so many lives. I held so many people while they broke down. I broke down. So when the opportunity to shield myself behind Zack arose I grabbed onto it with all I had, and I held on for 6 years. No shield now, which explains how this hole got punched through my chest. I wish that I could lock myself in a room and just write for the rest of my life. Never meeting anyone new, never having any visitors, never worrying about what anyone thinks of me or what everyone is doing. Just me in that windowless white room, just me and my words, no love, no pain, no anything. Numb. That is what I want to be. I just want to be numb.

Jesus H Christ

Men, no, BOYS are exhausting.

Never mind.

Just... never mind. I don't want to cry anymore.

Okay.

Feeling better. Feeling stronger. I stand in my apartment, my place, my haven and I feel the strength seeping into me. I am standing on my own again. I am my own again. It feels good. Do I still hope that he will change his mind while he was away and come back into my arms? Hell yes I do. Will I survive if he doesn't? Hell yes I will. I know that I don't have to be alone, I know that if I threw on some girly things and went out to the bar tonight someone would hit on me. That's not ego, I really don't understand it, it's just experience. Maybe sometime soon I will even let one of them pick me up, but now? No. It's still just him. Stupid him. Hah. So careful, so afraid that this is headed somewhere he doesn't want to go, so afraid of titles. Afraid. I was afraid at first, and then he made it all go away. I wonder if I can do the same for him? Either way, I forgot how great, how FANTASTIC it feels to have my own place. No parents, no roommates, just me and my space. That is my bed. That is my bathroom. That is my refrigerator. Those are my clothes. It is all mine, it all belongs to me and only me. And the strength seeps in, will the weakness still catch up with me now and again? I wouldn't be human if it didn't. But I will overcome it, I always do, and I don't, won't, need anyone's help in doing so.

Practice makes perfect.

My mind is learning quickly how best to protect me. Whenever my thoughts stray to a sweet comment, a gentle touch, a random kiss on the back of my neck, those beautiful idea that were laid out in front of me just days ago... whenever it strays in those directions this big iron gate slams down and stops them mid-step. It makes things easier. I didn't mean to hurt him when I said that I wished I could erase those weeks from my memory, I was only trying to make him understand the hurt that the memories from those days and nights cause me. I wish that I didn't remember the time he pulled me into his chest while we waiting in the line to see Toy Story; or how when I picked him up from home the first thing he did, even though I was on the phone, was swoop in for a kiss like he couldn't wait another second; or how he told me that I should go for it, touch him, hold his hand and put my arm around him wherever we were because he swore, pinky promised, he would never pull away; or how good and natural it felt to fall asleep next to him and wake up to him nuzzling my neck in the morning... all the little things, the tiny things that no one else has ever given me, those are the things that shoot through my armor and pierce me, make me bleed. I wish I could forget those tiny things, the things that made me so deliriously happy that I had to tell every one of my friends about them right away. I will stop texting him about all of this, it won't change a thing and it only makes me look like a pathetic, weak, sort of clingy ...something. Who would want to be with that? I will just pour it all out here and hope that he has forgotten the blog's address and doesn't read it. If he does read it? If you are reading it... hell. I guess I've never been anything but honest with you about all things, and I let all of my guards down with you, showing you this blog when I've shown it to no one else proves that. Hope it doesn't freak you out just how attached I got to you, how much I am hurting even though we had only known each other for a month. Maybe I hope that reading all of this will show you... something and make you change your mind. Though it would probably only solidify your decision being that it sounds like I am asking for commitment. That isn't the case babe. I don't want commitment, I don't want titles, I just want those little things back, those little things that kept me smiling, kept me going. That is all that I would ask of you, all that I would need. But I have a feeling that even that is asking too much.

And so the iron gates slam shut again, locking all those beautiful memories behind them, far away from me. And I will go on as though I am not hurting, as though I am not already missing it all, I will go on as a soldier again and I will no longer allow this yearning to drag me under.

Idiot.

How did I let this happen? I went from being independent and alright with it to waiting for his texts, staring at my buddy lists waiting for his name to appear. Pathetic. Fucking pathetic Dani. Seriously fucking pathetic. Now what the hell am I supposed to do? I've got 2 options I guess. First, I could go with what he wants and be his friend, his good friend. Second, I could disappear, he didn't know that I existed a little over a month ago and I can make that happen again. Sever all ties, a book out of the Levi's book. Mother fucker. Both of them would be hard. The entire time that we are friends I will just be waiting for him to realize he misses what we were before and to take it back and kiss me again... and if what he has been saying is anything to go by, that isn't going to happen. If I disappear I will miss him, I'll miss talking to him online for hours and texting over a hundred texts back and forth a day... though it sort of looks like all of that is going to change anyhow, no matter what he says. CHRIST I have been crying on and off for 2 days straight, what the fuck is wrong with me? I didn't even cry this much after Zack broke up with me. Fuck I don't even know who this is. Friends that I have had for years, over a decade, wonder what got into me. I don't let my guards down, I don't jump in without thinking, I don't let myself get vulnerable like that and I never have. But I did, it took less than a fucking day. Less that 12 hours. A month smiling like a moron at every text, every message, every word, kiss, touch, just being so stupid, blind happy that I wasn't thinking, that my walls fell and now here I am. Fucking sobbing. Daily. And worse is that I can't stop myself from reaching out over and over hoping... hoping he says what? Does what? Christ I'm obnoxious and pathetic and stupid and not ME. I am supposed to be STRONG. Fuck this. Fuck whatever this is. I guess if it could make me so happy so fast it's no wonder it can completely crush me just as efficiently. And if I had to use one word to describe me I would go with 'crushed.' I feel like a damned kicked puppy. I was sitting there all happy and stupid, wanting nothing but to please, and I got booted. Hard. It doesn't matter how nice the guy is, hell maybe the nicer they are the worse it is, that punch in the heart always takes the breath out of me. Always? He is only the third guy to ever do this to me, only the third guy to set me aside. I guess I can say always because Zack did it so many times that I should be full up for a lifetime. I wish he was awful. He is incapable of being anything but a great guy and it makes it worse in a way. When I told Domo that I needed a hug today hi response was "oh shit, who do I need to knock out?" I wish I could've given a name, been pissed enough to want to see that. But nope, pathetic puppy, still sitting here and hoping he will turn around. Mother fucker I sound like a fucking lunatic. Sever ties. I don't see any way around it. Disappear. It will be like I never existed. Get ready heart, here we go.

Broken.

Covered in bruises inside and out. I just want to be allowed to be happy, no strings attached, no titles, no promises. Just happy. I deserve it don't I? Haven't I paid my dues? But there is always something. There are always those lines, the ones that haunt my brain, the voices intermingling.

"I like you too much, it scares me."

"I'm not ready for that kind of commitment."

"We can still be friends."

The next time I allow myself to feel for someone I think I will tell them right off the bat, if you want to end things at any point just skip all of the lines and punch me in the gut. Then just walk away, I'll get the point, I'll feel exactly the same and it will save time.

I don't want to be a girlfriend again. I have been a girlfriend for a quarter of my life. I don't know what I want to be and I don't want to, didn't want to, think about it. I just want to be happy. I just want to know that there is someone there that is in just as deep as I am, that is just as lost in it as I am. It is scary and it makes you vulnerable but if it makes you happy just fucking go for it. I learned a long time ago, the hard way, that you can't wait for things to happen, you have to take them as they come, enjoy the moments, make them count, be happy. Because it could all be over tomorrow, just like that. There is this James Dean quote: "Dream as if you'll live forever, live as if you'll die today." I lived my life by that quote on top of one that I just realized is ridiculously, almost painfully, fitting. Mario Andretti: "If you feel in control, you're just not going fast enough." I want to run, I want to fly, i want things to happen but the world is pumping the brakes around me and I feel trapped, stuck in gridlock traffic and banging my fists against the steering wheel. I wish I had the guts to just get out of the car, get out of the crush, and run for it. Run for miles, run forever and never look back. Instead, here I am, living my life in slow motion, agonizing over every day, not so much living as though they were my last but wishing they were my last instead.

Soldier

I've been through a hell of a lot worse and come out alive. I always tell myself that when I get hurt and it sort of helps. It reminds me of what a soldier I was the day Jessie died, how I took charge while my parents and the world around me crumbled, how I got through telling everyone that they're 14 year old friend had hung herself in her closet, how I held them and was there for them and told them that everything would be okay even though I didn't believe a word I said and just wanted to curl up in a ball and never stop crying. I did that. I was a soldier. Which is why I get so pissed when I break down, when I get hurt. Nothing should be able to touch me after what I have been through, I have been trained in the art of hurting. But I still cry, I'm still human, I'm not the soldier that I want to be and I hate it. Jessie fucking broke me. I don't know where I got the strength to handle that day, that week, that month, adrenaline maybe? Because I have wanted to die from the sheer anguish nearly every day for the past 6 years. I've wanted the world to stop, I've wanted to go to sleep and never wake up, I've just wanted it all to go away and stay away. Hell maybe I am a soldier for staying alive through all of that, lord knows there have been times where I took too many pills on purpose, times that I drove too fast hoping I'd lose traction and slam into a tree or off a bridge, but I'm still here and staying here, whether I like it or not. And the answer is generally 'not.' So there we go, I talk myself into soldier mode again because doing so is quite possibly the only thing that keeps me alive.