Any­one who knows me well knows that I never have, and prob­a­bly never will, apol­o­gize for any of the words found on this site. For bet­ter or for worse, they are me at my most hon­est, my most raw and prob­a­bly a bet­ter rep­re­sen­ta­tion of me than any­thing else I could ever assem­ble.… at least, they are accu­rate at the time they are writ­ten. But this time, how­ever, I feel it's impor­tant that I apol­o­gize for the man­ner in which I said them.

When writ­ing the pre­vi­ous entry, I con­sid­ered the imme­di­ate ram­i­fi­ca­tions of doing so, but I did not expand that beyond its intended tar­get. Because of this gross mis­judge­ment on my part, peo­ple either already have or may yet be hurt or upset by the things said, both on this site and elsewhere.

I spit venom, the words pour­ing out of me in as large a num­ber as were needed but prob­a­bly much more sin­is­ter than were actu­ally required. For the first time in quite a while, I went too far.

I real­ize now that there may be repa­ra­tions for this that I had not even con­sid­ered. But if things should come to that, I have no one to blame but myself.

It was in no way my intent to do so, and I feel as though I've done my friends a great dis­ser­vice, but I can­not undo what's already been done. For every­one who this is intended for, and you know who you are, I sim­ply ask your forgiveness.

I'm sorry.

I remem­ber fran­ti­cally clean­ing clean­ing as I had never done before. Every­thing had to be per­fect. I remem­ber awak­en­ing the next morn­ing much, much ear­lier than I needed to. I just couldn't wait.… like a child on Christ­mas Eve.

I remem­ber all of the things my dear, dear friend said to me dur­ing many nights (and many late hours) pre­vi­ous. I lis­tened, took men­tal notes and made sure that the advice was fresh in my mind.

In the end, noth­ing she nor any­one could have said would have stopped it. The col­li­sion was inevitable.

And indeed it was. Some­thing about best-laid plans…

I remem­ber jump­ing into the car and get­ting to the air­port in what I can only imag­ine would be record-time. Stand­ing at the bag­gage claim, my stom­ach was in knots and in that state it remained for sev­eral days following.

Seven days was all it took.

Seven days where time stood still, where we could for­get every­thing around us, where the only peo­ple we needed to heal were each other.

Seven days where noth­ing else mat­tered and she was mine.

And then, just as quickly as it had started.… it was over. And there I was again alone.

I remem­ber every­thing as if it had just hap­pened, as if I were float­ing in a dream. I remem­ber the smell of her hair, the tex­ture of her lips, the warmth of her body next to mine, the sound of her voice as she ral­lied the courage to whis­per, "I love you."

I remem­ber kiss­ing her softly, feel­ing more alive than I could ever remem­ber being. I remem­ber hear­ing those words and know­ing that she truly meant them. I remem­ber her ask­ing me to make love to her, and that for the first time in quite a long time, doing so because I was in love with some­one who actu­ally loved me back.

And I remem­ber watch­ing every­thing crum­ble before my eyes as I drove to the air­port just as I had seven days prior the dif­fer­ence this time being that I drove as slowly as pos­si­ble to give her one last chance to change her mind.

Less than twenty-four hours removed from the ordeal, I sim­ply said the three words to her that she had been coura­geous enough to utter just a few nights pre­vi­ous. The response this time, how­ever, was very different.

"You know we can't say that any­more. But you know how I feel."

And then I remem­ber run­ning away, because it was all I knew to do.

That was nine­teen months ago.

This is here so that you don't for­get. I still hurt, and for what­ever rea­son, the pain in my heart is stronger than the remain­der of any love that I ever held for you. On this, your anniver­sary, remem­ber, always remem­ber, that you took the heart and soul of a per­son you claimed to love and crushed it, for only the rea­son that you were too much of a cow­ard to do what you wanted to do in the first place.

Never, ever for­get that.

What I read this morn­ing just about brought me to tears.

I'm one of those peo­ple that, despite occa­sion­ally being known for being an ass­hole, really is hit hard when peo­ple I care about are hurt­ing. The fact that I'm pow­er­less to help or change the sit­u­a­tion really just makes me feel worse. I know that things that hap­pen to loved ones aren't my fault and aren't under my con­trol, but still.…it makes me sad, nevertheless.

The final insult hits me when I real­ize that this per­son, whom I care about so much, is out­side the realm of my help or com­fort not because of logis­ti­cal rea­sons, but because it's a per­son with whom I haven't spo­ken with in over a year.…by their preference.

Our rela­tion­ship was never an easy one, not even in the begin­ning. I kid­ded myself about that one for a long time, think­ing that some­thing had changed. In real­ity, I was half-right. Some­thing did change, but that didn't mean that things were ever easy. In the begin­ning, part of me felt as if I was set­tling in being with her, and I knew that I could get away with just about any­thing because of how infat­u­ated she was with me. I was, in short, an ass­hole. For some rea­son, she took it. And I fell in love with her in the process.

Don't ask me how it works.

I'd like to think that I got bet­ter. I think the truth is that the order of things just shifted. I let jeal­ousy and other petty emo­tions inter­fere with us. Was I ever that stu­pid? Oh yes, yes I was. I've always been told that hind­sight is 20/20 and never believed it because I thought that I was bet­ter than that, smarter than that. Boy, was that a jolly day when I dis­cov­ered that an ego didn't make up for being human.

After us ended, instead of learn­ing how to get bet­ter, I got much, much worse—evidence of which can be found else­where on this site. I was nei­ther friendly nor sup­port­ive. My self­ish­ness con­sumed me to the point that I for­got that, hey dick­head, she was hurt­ing, too. And I made things worse.

And after every­thing, after months of promises, of hold­ing hands, of scream­ing matches, of tears, we still came to each other when no one else cared. We some­how weren't able to count on us, but we man­aged to count on eachother as friends. I trea­sured that far beyond any­thing tan­gi­ble thing I've ever owned.

Until it just stopped.

It's been over a year now since we've spo­ken. We still have mutual friends, but I don't ask about her—and, to my knowl­edge, she doesn't ask about me. I guess it's a bit of an unspo­ken rule. Hell, everything's unspo­ken at this point.

Yet still I read her writ­ings only to find out that, through­out our entire his­tory, whether together or apart, one thing remains the same. When she hurts, I hurt for her. It's not sym­pa­thy and it's not empa­thy, it's just.…there.

I don't like being restricted. I don't like not being able to call her and at least lend an ear. I guess I could, but truth­fully, I think that the feel­ing of being restricted is eas­ier to deal with than that of being rejected.

I told Jake that I wished there was just a way to put an end to every­thing and for­get about it. I want some way to close the book, put it on a shelf, and let it col­lect dust. He went on to tell me that this was com­pletely impos­si­ble. He said that the only thing that ever remains the same is that every­thing will always change. There are always turn­ing points, and if you turn enough times, you end up find­ing your­self in a direc­tion you've been going before. He said that there will come a day when we finally do speak again and hope­fully, pick up where we left off—as friends.

I sup­pose he's right. Until then, the book remains on the shelf—layer upon layer of dust cov­er­ing it, pre­serv­ing its con­tents, until the day comes when the two of us blow off the dust, creak it open and write a new chapter.

It's been over a week since my attempt. No respon­se­just as I expected and rather pre­ferred. Part of this was con­veyed in a con­ver­sa­tion ear­lier tonite, but damn, did that make me feel better.

What I didn't say in that par­tic­u­lar chat was that the feel­ing was rather fleet­ing. The long-term feel­ing was one of, well, dis­com­fort. Uneasi­ness. Void. What­ever it's called, I'll chalk it up to not really being what I would have wanted. But it's done, though.

…and it's pro­gressed into a feel­ing that I should do more, some­thing to really exact vengeance. When brought up ear­lier tonite, the per­son I was talk­ing to didn't exactly approve of the method of doing so (just flat-out telling every­one). Per­haps right­fully so, but they told me to "just let it go and don't ruin some­one else's life again."

A fun­da­men­tal prob­lem, that state­ment. One: If any­one hurt any­one, I was the one on the receiv­ing end. Two: I've decided that I'm going to be as fuck­ing pissed as I want to for just as long as I want to. Three: I'm going to do what I feel is right for me and no one else. If some­one decides not to agree with my choices, that's just fine with me, but it's not going to be a con­sid­er­a­tion and it's not going to stop me. Think­ing about how oth­ers might feel is no longer worth the effort.

I've already lost enough doing things that way.

[You know who you are],

As the sub­ject should imply, I'm writ­ing this as a final attempt at clo­sure between us, as it has now become appar­ent to me that all other avenues have failed.

I don't really under­stand why it was that you con­tacted me last month. At first, I believed the pre­text that you wanted to bury the bad blood and the hurt feel­ings in order to rekin­dle our friendship.

I believed you.

Even though it went against every per­sonal pol­icy I have, I called you back and decided to give this yet another chance.…which, by my count, would make #3. I wanted to believe that you were sin­cere about me and about our friendship.

I know bet­ter now.

Since our con­ver­sa­tion and its short follow-up, how many times have we spo­ken? Zero. Seems as if a "friend" would want to be a lit­tle more involved in a friend's life. As I wrote on my site, I believe that the only rea­son you ini­ti­ated our "make-up" was to alle­vi­ate your own feel­ings of guilt about every­thing that's hap­pened between us and that you had absolutely no inten­tion of becom­ing friends again.

I hate you for that.

At this point, I feel I should con­grat­u­late you, though. It befud­dles me how, but at any rate, you were able to roy­ally fuck me over and then con­vince me to come back for more. That's quite the feat, you know. Of course, it's due to my will­ing­ness to trust.… be cer­tain that I won't be mak­ing that mis­take again.

I refuse to let the hurt­ing con­tinue. I take back every bit of energy or care I ever gave to you– you've shown me that you do not, have not, and will never deserve it. I really don't under­stand why you've cho­sen to do things this way, but I really wish it hadn't come to this. I wanted us to be friends, I wanted to care about you. But it's just become too fuck­ing painful.

Since you pre­vi­ously believed what I said in an entry to be threat­en­ing and it wasn't, per­haps I should spell this out for you. If you're ever to take some­thing I say as threat­en­ing, take this: When some­one becomes my enemy, I pull no punches. Those who have had the unfor­tu­nance to be in that posi­tion could attest to it. And even if I do noth­ing per­son­ally, I whole­heart­edly believe in karma and am con­fi­dent, at least in that respect, that your uppance will come somehow.

As I told Amy, I now know that no one, no mat­ter who they are, ever deserves any­thing more than a sec­ond chance.

I will never for­get how much you hurt me and how much pain you caused in my heart.

I hope you never will, either.