So it's almost been a full month into September and my junior year of college.  It's bizarre to think that my college experience is half over and that I'll be turning 20 next month, officially rendering my teenage years into the past.  So far, this month has started off really stressful with intensive amounts of work, group projects with group members that are idiots and a roommate who is unable to stand my night owl state of mind because she can't sleep while there's a desk lamp on...-.-;; how irritating it will become. 

J and I are still together and sometimes, well, a lot of the time I wonder where this will go.  Will we get married?  Will he really love me forever?  Am I settling?  Do I love myself enough to not quantify my self worth through someone else's love for me?  Am I with him through habit or do I actually love him?  When do you realize, even in a long-term relationship or marriage, that what you have is or isn't still love anymore but rather just habit and dependency? 

I also think that there may be something wrong with me...I've been getting odd dizzy spells where I can easily just as sit or stand in one spot and feel like the room is spinning.  I've been feeling nauseous and getting headaches and other times I'm an insomniac or super exhausted.  Sometimes I even get oddly depressed, could it be depression?

Life seems to not be going my way this year, since I've come back from Shanghai, my close friends have all seemed to disappear.  One had a religious epiphany and is off to Cambodia for Missions, the other had his father laid off and can no longer afford to come to my school and the other just got "too busy" to hang out and has all but rejected every single invitation for a get together meal.  I made one close girl friend from Shanghai and she lives near me, but she isn't around on weekends and now that school has officially started and dance too, I find less available time to hang out with her.  Plus she has her man toys too and will be leaving me in the Spring again when she finds another location to study abroad at.  My other friends have also moved to different locations that are far away from me, and so now I find myself feeling more alone and isolated than I ever have before.  Maybe it is depression and a lack of self esteem and confidence in myself.  There must be some reason why I keep losing all my close friends.  I honestly can't call anyone my best friend anymore, I virtually no longer have one.  The only person who continuously talks to me and cares about me is J.  I guess without him I'd really be alone.  And my dance group hurts my feelings more than feeling like a home away from home.   They all seem strange and foreign to me, and they no longer feel like they care about me.  I just want friends that actually care about me.  Real friends try to find ways to hang out and ask about your day and well-being.  They not just "friends" with you because of affiliation and that's what it feels like. 

I just no longer feel like I fit in anymore.  It's disheartening and makes me dislike this year immensely. 

At least V is still around and S will be back in the spring.  I miss talking to them, they actually cared.  And V still hangs out with me when she can.  Living with them was so easy and we were always there for each other. 

I miss having people other than J to depend on.  When did life get so hard and lonely?

i often lie awake and quiet in bed
minutes to hours without ever an end
and filled with crazy musings in my head

sleepless nights and rapid dreams
no lending arm or calming friend
always aware of the sun's looming gleam

So here is the entire story of my longest and most serious relationship.  I dated a boy named T about 5 and half years ago and with that I became close friends with one of his friends, J.  The relationship with T only lasted a few months and ended on good terms but I remained close with J.  We seemed to understand each other and were able to have great phone conversations even though we hardly saw each other.  This friendship lasted for about 2 years and in the meantime I had dated another guy (R) for 9 months.  Roughly 2-3 months after I broke up with R, I was feeling restless and a bit lonely and suddenly I found myself more attracted to J.  We had always flirted with each other and were sometimes quite touchy feely but before this we had kept it as just friends.  And then one night at one of my friend's birthday party I decided to kiss him and from that day on we had a sort of friends with benefits type of relationship.  I wasn't really into having a relationship with him and just wanted a sort of physical fling but I noticed that he was developing feelings for me and I was as well too.  He asked me out and I rejected him the first time and agreed to it for the second time.  I figured I didn't have much to lose, our friendship was beyond going back to what it was since we had already hooked up and I liked him a little bit since I was hooking up with him.  At first I really liked him, and then it faded, and then grew again.  I wanted to break up a few times, but he was pretty good at convincing me to stay and work things out, etc.  I learned to compromise more for him and over the years I developed stronger feelings for him, or perhaps it was a dependency?  We ended up dating for about 3 and a half years and we never went to the same high school and even did the long distance thing for my first year of college (he's a year older than myself).  He lives in NY and I go to school in Boston.  It's not too far and he commutes to school in the city.  It had seemed that we were doing just fine in our relationship, but this past summer I was working in NYC too, along with him, and so we saw each other alot more often then we were used to.  By this point I was very much attached to him and didn't know how to live my life without him, I couldn't even imagine it.  And I believe, towards the end of summer I started to cling onto him more because I felt like it wasn't the same, like the love wasn't always there.  And meanwhile, he worked as an orientation leader at his school and met lots of new people every day (including lots of new freshmen girls) and I honestly felt a little threatened by some of them.  He would always be getting texts from a few freshmen girls and they would always be asking him for help on beginning year stuff and he even hung out with some of them.  To me, it felt like some sort of an overstepping of boundaries since he was their orientation leader and not really their friend, yet was hanging out with them like friends.  I hated it when he would say, "oh she's just a friend."  But for the most part I believed him.  Then towards the very end of August, as he started school and I was getting ready to leave for my semester, I noticed that this one girl's name, Y, popped up a lot and he seemed to be spending more time with her.  The first Friday after my first week of school ended, he tells me that he wants to break up.  And here I am shocked to hear about this.  He tells me that there's no one else, he tells me that it's because of the distance, that he seems to love me less even though he still does, but no enough to work things out, and he tells me that there's a lot of issues with me that aren't really my fault, but he just doesn't want to deal with anymore.   He says that he feels under appreciated, that he hates how I make him wait outside for like 10 minutes even though I know that he hates waiting, and how I ignore him and shut him out when we fight instead of talking things through.  He says it's not my fault, but he makes it sound like it is.  And the thing that confuses me so much is that all these things that he was complaining about, were all things that already existed with me, they were all things that he knew would be there.  He also said that he hated feeling like he had a part-time girlfriend since I was always so busy and had such big dreams and goals in my life and also that the distance was hard enough, but the fact that I was studying abroad in the spring was making it even harder.  This really pissed me off because what is that supposed to mean?  That all the things he loved about me, how I was driven and passionate and goal oriented with dreams was a bad thing?!  That he wanted a girlfriend who lived 5 minutes away and could cater to his every need and not have dreams or goals?  Just because he didn't know what he wanted to do with his life, I can't already know and pursue it?  He said he felt like we were going in two different directions and yet, when I brought this up, when I brought up long distance and all these other issues that he was now bringing up, he would always say, "Let's deal with it when we get there," but now he's thinking about the future and after all the promises he made to me about always being honest, faithful, and loving, it was all crap.  For the longest time I was confused, hurt, angry, depressed, and most of all I felt betrayed and abandoned.  He was my closest friend and my most serious and committed boyfriend.  We lost our virginities to each other and we just always depended on each other for a level of comfort and listening that other people couldn't provide.  Yet now he wanted something else, something different, and I was no longer enough.  I was no longer worth the trouble.  And yet, as hurt and angry as I was about him wanting to break up, I lowered myself enough to beg and cry to him to give us another chance, that we could work it, to just work with me for 2 weeks.  He finally agreed and to some degree, I hated him for making me grovel like that.  I never had to before and for a while I reasoned that it was probably because I was too strong of a woman, that his ego and pride was hurt, that maybe he needed me to act like that clingy sobby girlfriend for once, that he needed to know that I was afraid of losing him too instead of just vice versa.

And so i visited the next weekend and that Friday he broke up with me, but I stayed over and spent the rest of the weekend with him.  We spent it like a couple and I cried and cried, even begged, but still it provided me some type of mini closure knowing that these were the last whatevers (last kiss, last time he would hold he, the last time he would touch my face or brush my hair away).  It was heartbreaking and bittersweet and at the time, I felt that it was enough.  Even though I still wondered...why?  Why leave me now after 3.5 years, after trying long-distance, after going through hardships, after only a month before I wanted to seriously break-up and he begs and cries for me to stay?  It just didn't make sense and it still doesn't.  He didn't even give me 2 weeks and then that was it.  I called him once I got back to my dorm room.  I had cried on the bus, but after crying all weekend, I felt spent and exhausted, I couldn't cry anymore, not for that day at least.  And that was supposed to be the last phone conversation.  I IMed him a few times because it was strange having such a drastic piece of my life, such time committment just ripped away from me and so we would chat sometimes.  And I would cry sometimes and just think, why??  So about 2 weeks after I asked him again, why couldn't we have worked things out?  After all that time, and even though I didn't want to admit it, I was hoping and waiting for him to change his mind, realize that he had made a mistake.  I didn't want to beg anymore and at the time I still wanted him back, but he was taking too long, my patience was running short, and he was being kind of a jerk.  He expected me to call him, to IM him, to show him that I still cared and I could tell from him saying, "I'll talk to you later...you're just gonna IM me tomorrow or something."  So I didn't...I needed to pick up my pride and so I called him those 2 weeks later and told him that the reasons he gave me weren't enough, they weren't enough to end the kind of relationship we had, to waste all the time we had on stupid reasons like that and most of which I could change about myself, since at the time I was so willing to compromise.  And so I asked him, why did he really want to break up?  And he tells me that it's because he wanted to see other people, that because I was his first and only girlfriend, he wants to see what's out there and he felt that maybe there might be someone better for him out there.  He says that there wasn't anyone in his life now that he wanted, but he just wanted to be single and just see what's out there even though he promised not to date anyone for at least 4 months (which I think is little considering how long our relationship was and how serious and committed it was...plus it would be the polite thing to do and show me that he at least cared about my feelings).  With this reason, I felt that was enough.  Maybe not 100% enough, but enough for me to start healing and moving on.  I accepted that because I felt that it was only inevitable he feel that way.  I've had other boyfriends before, unlike him, and so I know what it's like to be with other people.  Granted I only know what it's like to be completely intimate with him, I wasn't curious enough about sex with other men to leave him.  And so, I rationalized, he's a guy and guys naturally want to sleep with as many women as they can before they settle down.  He's never so much as even kissed another woman and so I decided to let him go.  Men will be men and boys will be boys.  Maybe I'm being too sexist, but I believe that in some point in a man's life, if he has only been with one woman, he'll wonder what it's like to be with some other hot, sexy, young woman.  So...I let him go and I felt better.  I cried maybe once or twice more afterwards, but I was okay. 

But, then comes along the following week and he tells me that he wants me back.  I knew that it was coming because he told me he had some good news and whatnot and began to talk to me first instead of me beginning all our conversations.  During the time that I was healing I began to feel free and noticed that I was making more friends, going out more, maybe falling behind in my homework, but I was finally getting my act together since he totally distracted me from school work by giving me a traumatic experience at the very beginning of the semester.  And to my surprise, I didn't want to pick up the phone.  I didn't want to talk to him.  I felt tired.  I had alot of work to do that night, yet I decided that a short conversation would be fine.  But it ended up lasting for hours and instead of just telling me that he wanted to get back together, he tells me also at the end of asking for me back, that he had slept with someone.  I mark that night as the night of the Heroe's premiere.  He was at his friend's apartment, got drunk, and got seduced by some stranger girl that he just met that night, and he decides to not use protection.  This disgusts me and angers me like no other.  He agrees to not date but yet he goes out, gets drunk and has sex with someone he doesn't even know?  This made me view him in an entirely different light and made me definitely think of him as every other guy out to get ass once they're free.  And I don't believe he was that drunk to decide whether or not it was right for him to do this as he had a conversation beforehand to find out about the girl's sexual history and decide that she was clean enough to sleep with.  That it was okay.  Before he told me this I was very hesitant to take him back, but this threw me over the edge and infuriated me.  I felt betrayed and I felt that he was disgusting and dirty.  I told him I didn't know and hung up. 

We talked every now and then afterwards, short curt phone calls from my side, and him getting STD tested and examined.  He came out negative for herpes and HIV/Aids and I felt a little better about it.  Yes, I had no claim to him since he was single at that time, but it made me feel like a second choice and like I had been slapped in the face.  So sex with that girl wasn't so great, so he couldn't finish it off with her because he realized that he couldn't get  into it, but imagining another woman touching him or him touching another woman skeeved me out and made me feel hurt and angry every time.  He says he wanted me back because he was scared that I was getting over him, because he realized that he had been complaining about me to his friends and that he had pretty much listened to them when they encouraged him to break up with me, and that he never bothered to ask himself why, if it was "so bad" he had stayed with me for so long?  What shocked me was that he didn't bother to ask himself this before or that he wasn't listening to me and thinking about it when I asked him these very same questions.  It didn't make sense to me.  He also eventually admitted to me that the girl, Y, that I mentioned earlier in this entry, had a crush on me and that he had started to develop feelings for her too during that first week when he mentioned breaking up with me.  That pissed me off even more, he had promised to try to work things out with me, and yet he knew that this girl liked him because she told him so, that he was starting to like this girl, and yet he was spending alot of time with her, taking the train home with her since she lived near him.  How is that trying to work things out with me??  And mind you she looks like one of those sexy but skanky girls and yet he didn't see that.  He said that she had even asked him to kiss her, but that he didn't because he was still with me....(like really that makes SUCH a difference..-.-;;).  As if being honest to me about all this was such a great thing, yea he can be credited for that, but really, the fact that he always does things he knows I wouldn't like but still does them anyway really pisses me off.  And then he tells me that he only started to like her because she was acting like me and was acting like a girl he could see himself with, which made him think that there might be better woman out there for him.  Then he finds out that she's just a pothead and ciggarette smoker and wild party flirter person AFTER we break up.  How interesting that he didn't even bother to get to really know her beforehand and now decides to come crawling back?  How can I not think of myself as a second choice when he makes it seem like I am?  And he tells me that I'm not, that I'm his first choice.  So, oh he goes out and finds out that maybe girls aren't as principaled like me, aren't as conservative like me, or honest like me and decides to run back after a few weeks of damage and at a time when I'm finally starting to get over him.  At this point I don't know what to do, I don't know how I feel.  I feel very angery, disappointed, betrayed, used, taken advantage of, etc. but still, feelings accumulated over 3.5 years don't just disappear within a month.

At first I wanted to play revenge, but then after him sending me letters and to this date, 58 emails with a love song attached that expresses how he feels, I started to cave and be a little nicer.  I decided to give him a chance to prove himself, see if I still feel the same way and also if I even want to still be with him.  I still, most definitely have not forgiven him.  And we've been talking alot and we're somewhat seeing each other and as I look upon this entry, I feel like it was too easy.  I've seen him about 3 different weekends since he's tried to get back together and each time it seems more and more like when we were a couple.  But it's still different, I feel awkward around his friends and I most definitely don't want him to hang out with my friends.  We each have our respective sides and his friends are now upset that I'm taking so long to take him back, but after all he's done to me, after all the pain I went through, and after he selfishly does all this crap during all the wrong times when I'm always super busy with school work or other crap, I can't help but feel that he's the one being selfish.  Obviously I still care about him, but I don't know if I want to be with him.  It's completely the wrong time and really, what he wants the most, is to be able to call me his girlfriend and himself, my boyfriend.  But this is really not the time, I'm so busy with school and I'll be studying abroad for 5 months and we wont have much time together and how am I, in this short time, supposed to be able to ever forgive him or trust him again.  Anytime now he hangs out with a girl too much I feel like he's acting the same way he did with Y.  Everytime he helps some freshmen girl with her stuff or one of his pretty coworkers talk to him or whatever, makes me think that I'll never get over what he did or trust him again.  I don't know what I want anymore.  I know what it is like to be with him and it is nice and I am happy for the most part when I am with him, and it does feel right, but he's made promises to me and he broke them anyway.  He says that he's serious about me now, that he loves me and actually never really stopped loving me, and that he knows that I'm the one for him.  But I wonder, how can he possibly know that, he didn't even have enough time to be single to realize the perks.  I love being in a relationship, but I also love being single too.  This is a time where I don't need any extra drama or stress and also where I need my freedom and just time to myself and to go out more and make more friends.  I know that I can be okay without him but I also know that I would be disappointed and sad if he gave up now.  So that makes me wonder, do I really want to get back with him and am just waiting for the right sign that shows me that it's worth it to go back?  Or am I just conflicted and confused about what it used to be and what it actually is now.  Can I really ever forgive him and move on?  Aren't we just reverting back to how we used to be instead of moving forward?  I'm only going to be even busier from here on out, I might even work abroad or whatever.  Is it worth it?  Will he still stick with me then.  I can't afford to let him to do what he did to me again.  What if he realizes that it's not love but just dependency?  I love the kind of relationship we had, but is it enough?  And I really question if what I have for him is love or not, because I don't even know what love is.  I just care about him alot and for the most part, invested alot of myself into the relationship we had and also made alot of room for him in my own life.  Isn't it possible that it was just dependency?  And now, ironically, I want to be single and see what it's like to be with other people.  I honestly don't have anyone in my life right now, but I feel like it doesn't matter, because I honestly just want to give myself time to find myself and maybe just be with myself.  It was nice while it lasted and now, even though I'm only seeing him, I see myself reverting back to how I was like when I was his girlfriend.  Granted maybe it's just because I'm super busy right now and overloading, but I feel like I'm becoming more antisocial again and also more conservative and willing to meet new people, I've become more closed off again and I hate that.  Maybe the relationship was good while it lasted, but I need something new?  I really have no intention of developing a relationship with someone since I'll be going overseas, but being with him again would be easy and difficult too.  I don't know....what should I do?  He seems serious, he's been trying hard, and he's also cried alot to me, so if I take him back I don't know if it's because of his effort or because I really want to.