The words from her mouth enlighten me and disturb me at the same time.

It hurts me to know that I was so blatant but could not see things for myself. Freshman year was so long but yet so short in my memory. Several key memories come to me, but I have since lost the whole story. It turns out I never had the whole story to begin with.

I tried to be a friendly person, but apparently I had my moments of being self-centered. The 'only child' card gets played. I'm sick of people saying that I must be a particular way because I don't have any siblings. What I think it really was was my high school friends. Not all of them, but some of them, mainly the ones I saw in school since elementary school. I know I was clingy then and tried to hold onto them and keep the conversation on something I could relate to. They pushed me away, hurting me, and it showed in my behavior during my Freshman year, for it became how I interacted with people here, too. Her words don't bring much more enlightenment into my high school days, except that they make me even more sick of how some of my high school friends treated me because of how they affected that year. It almost makes me want to stop caring and trying at all for some of them.

It hurts me to have bad marks on my record. To have done things that people still remember even if they have forgiven and since moved on.

Maybe that is why I have blocked out so much of my pre-college days from memory. I have told him this before in conversations where I have analyzed myself, where something he said has made me analyze myself. I always blame it on the middle school days, and sometimes the high school days. Were they really that screwed up, or is it just that I have moved on from that life that has allowed me to see it as separate from the life I am in now and see it for what it truly was?

I never liked anyone before college; if I did, I never knew it.

I never liked anyone at college; I apparently did, and I never knew it. It hurts that everyone else did. The way in which people tell me I liked him them in an "it's so obvious" tone not only hurts but it pisses me the heck off. How are they to know? How are my actions to be judged against me when I didn't even know I was upsetting people? I don't blame myself for not knowing I liked him, but I do blame myself for hurting people I had befriended and wanted to hold onto in ways I wasn't able to in high school. My liking him was pushing others away. I knew it was bad to let a guy interfere with your other friendships, and know not to do so consciously, but apparently I did so subconsciously. It hurts. I tried to stay out of the situation, but apparently I was one of the key players. Right now it hurts to look at pictures of him and of the two of us, and of thinking about him, because of what she said about a time when I hurt her, another friend, and him by saying something I meant completely innocently, being unaware of the rest of the dynamics, only aware of my high school experiences in similar matters.

I do not mind losing who I lost from it. I am glad I didn't lose all that I could have lost; she and I have been fine for over a year, but not as fine until this summer, and until now. And I am of course glad I gained a boyfriend, even if it was a year after the situation. I think it must have had to be, in order for it to survive.

But lately I have felt myself breaking down more in trying to deal with people and with myself. Some of it can be blamed on PMS, but I think some of it is just me. Whether it's me reconnecting with my emotional childhood days or it's me being in a process of falling apart bit by bit. I certainly don't want him to be the only one I have left, but occassionally I worry that there will be a day in which he isn't what he is to me now.

And I wonder if it has turned into a drug. Needing reaffirmation that things are fine so I can breathe easily for a little while, until the next slightest instance gets me wondering again. I don't want to treat him like I did my high school friends. Nor do I want to treat anyone like that.

I apparently 'grew up' a lot since Freshman year. I think so too, but in different ways. I would think everyone has done so, but she made it sound like I needed it more than others.

It's times like these when being secluded from the world sounds really appealing, in the same way as staying out of trouble does. A 'why bother' in order to avoid the drama. But if I had kept up the pace of seclusion I had been doing, I wouldn't have met most of these people I call friends today, and would probably only be a lonlier person from it.

And while she told me these words, my grandma passed away. At least she has it easy now.