I still haven't given H his Christmas present. And I don't think I'm going to. I've been going back and forth about this, debating the meaning behind each possible course of action. If I give it to him, will he think I'll want him back? If I give it to him, does that mean I want him back? If I don't, then am I just being bitter? If I don't, am I just in denial of my true feelings?

I bought the thing weeks before I decided to cut him off, and I just feel like I don't know what to do with the thing anymore. I can't return it, nor would I want to. I can't give it to any one else... because well, that just feels wrong. And the right thing to do really is to just give it to the guy. But that act could bring an onslaught of self doubt. But if he doesn't know it's from me, then I guess it's ok. If he's beginning to move on too, I don't want him to relapse. Consistency is only fair.

So a few days ago, Jorie told me about a picture he had put up on his MySpace - this being the reason why I decided not to reactivate my MySpace account - drama. All she said was that it showed him hugging/dancing a girl, his friend, whom he used to have feelings for way back when he couldn't wipe his own ass. My bad, he still can't. j/k... just way back when. Anyway, I always had a feeling that he never got over her and I was scared to see the picture because I didn't want to relapse either. I didn't want this picture to ruin me, to ruin my healing process.

But tonight, in my solitude, I decided I would see it. Not knowing truly is worse than knowing. And I realized that my fear was not because I thought the picture would be true, my fear stems from my own doubt that I wasn't over him, that I wasn't past him. I thought that if I could put off facing the answer to that question, that sense of doubt, then I would be ok. I thought that by not knowing, I was helping myself move on. But I wasn't. I was only helping myself stand still, at the same exact place I already was.

So I decided to see the picture and here it is.



And I can't totally say that I'm not hurting from it. It hurts. It's painful to see some other girl in his arms. But I can say that it doesn't hurt the way I thought it would. I imagined myself in some unbearable pain. I imagined gut-wrenching agony. I imagined death. But there was no catastrophe, no earthquakes, no need for sutures. I was not sailing on the river Styx after seeing the picture. There were no tears, no broken floodgates. There was no panic attack. There was just me, in the know.

Solitude does this thing to you. It makes you all weak. It tempts you. But it does it to test you. It does it to see if you're ready. Howelse was I going to know if I was ready if I didn't try knowing? So now I'm in the know. D was right. Distance works. D's right about a lot of things. Although, he doesn't get all the credit. Fathima has been trying to tell me this for years. Unfortunately, it takes a tall cute boy for me to listen and believe. That should change. Maybe next year.

But right now, I'm still a little sad. I'm sad in an "oh well" kind of way. And you know what, that just makes me really happy, because it means that I'm healing. It makes me happy that I'm not devastated. That I'm not in an emergency room being treated for a Tylenol and Bayer overdose. That I'm not being forced to drink charcoal water. That I'm not sitting in a psych ward making an exact replica of Van Gogh on the wall with everyone tapping my shoulder condescendingly telling me "good job." Yeah, it makes me really happy that the scars are a few years old, that they're beginning to fade back into the shade of the rest of my skin. Most of all, it makes me happy that I've severed that tie, that I can really begin to make myself whole again.

I wrote this when I was 15. "I can't be half of what's a couple til I'm whole while on my own." Damn, I used to be smart. I wish I listened to myself more often. From now on, I'll try.


***
H, these are the things I didn't know how to say before. Grey's Anatomy gave me the words.

"It's not enough."

- Season 2, episode 1
It never was. I was lying to myself everytime I said we'd make it because we loved each other, because I loved you. But it wasn't enough. The things you did weren't enough. My trying wasn't enough. And most of all, you didn't try enough. And frankly, that's just not enough. I wanted more. I want more. Not from you per se, but from a relationship.

"Hating you is the most exhausting... and I don't want to do it anymore."

- Season 2, episode 3
I'll give you the Christmas present because I don't want to hate you anymore. I want to find peace from all this. I don't want it to linger for years, or smell stale, like fromunda cheese.
reader: what's fromunda cheese?
me: cheese from unda your nuts.
lol. You gave me that joke. Thanks.

"If there's an upside to freefalling... it's the chance you give your friends to
catch you"

- Season 2, episode 3
And they do and I love them for it.

"It's hard to accept the end when you're too close"

- Season 2, episode 4
But it's not impossible. Whoever said it'd be easy anyway.