Two Long Years

My friend Sarah says that it takes at least half the time you were with someone to get over them.

So based on those calculations it should take me, oh, two and a half years to get over Michael. Scratch that, two years, five months, and one week.

But I doubt it will take that long. I mean really, I think God has been preparing my heart for the split for a while now. I mean I didn't even cry when I ended it this time. And it's been almost a month and I have yet to speak to him or tell him that I miss him and want to get back together.

Yes there are still moments when I want to. Just tonight my heart started to ache when I came across a picture of him.

But my heart doesn't ache for him exactly. It aches for the things that he did for me and to me. He was the band aid that covered the hole left by the men in my life. He was the one that I could call at three in the morning if I had a bad dream or if I was scared.

He also treated me like crap which is what I wanted.

See I've figured out why I held on to him for so long despite the fact that for three years he treated me like a disposable dish cloth.

I've had no shining example of what a good, healthy relationship looks like. I love my parents to death but they failed miserably in that area. When my parents were together they acted more like two people who were just stuck with each other than two married people in love. I can't remember them ever kissing, or being affectionate, or anything. He was either in his room or in the studio most of the time and she was working three jobs. They were never together. And then the screaming started. Every night they would yell at each other and my sister and I would pretend not to notice. And then they split.

So when I started to notice boys, and when they started to notice me, I had no idea how to handle the situation. I had no idea what a healthy relationship was. All I knew was what my sunday school teachers had told me. That I was not to have sex and that any boy who asked for sex was bad. And that I should only date christians.

And so with my insecurities and warped idea of a good relationship was in hand I entered into what I like to call the dating years.

It all started out with a boy named David. Good looking chap and even better friend, I fell for him hard and quickly. Eventually I told him that I liked him and one fateful winter retreat he decided that he wanted to kiss me. So we kissed. One month later, we kissed again. Three months later, we kissed again. This time with tounge. It ended after that, the friendship and everything. Of course I was upset and so I lashed out. I allowed anger to take control and I became bitter. After all, that's what I thought girls did when heart broken. That's what TV had taught me. So I acted like jerk and remained bitter for a few years.

Meanwhile, not too long after David came Michael.

He was sweet in the beginning, the perfect gentleman. He showered me with compliments, gave me money to buy cheap little rings from the machines which I still have, drove me around town, took me to the airport to watch planes land and talk. It was just lovely in the beginning. But of course all good things must come to an end. He started to put pressure on me concerning the physical part of our relationship. Of course I eventually gave in. I didn't want to lose him. I cared about him too much and besides, he was the only boy to every really say that he liked me and not take it back a bit later. I didn't want to lose him like my mom lost my dad. So I put up with it, I gave him what he wanted in exchange for a relationship.

But of course things started to change. We talked less, went out less, and eventually stopped taking me out in public. He'd only come around to my house when he was horny and needed to be offed.

And I was more than willing to oblige. After all he said that he loved me, what more could a girl want? For all I knew that was all there was to a relationship. It was way too much to ask for a friendship as well. All that mattered was that he made me happy, somewhat, and I continued to turn him on.

I knew it wasn't a good relationship. I knew that what we were doing was wrong. I knew and yet I did nothing. Not even when my friendships were on the line, which I have to say was a pretty awful move on their part. What ever happened to being there through thick and thin? Anyway, I digress.

I knew that everything about me and him was wrong and yet I continued to stay. Why? Not because of the way he made me feel, not because I "loved" him, but because with him it was easy.

Yes I was often miserable but I knew how to handle this type of relationship. I knew how it worked. He got what he wanted, I got him, and I was only miserable part of the time. I knew what to expect with him. Like I said, it was easy.

But thankfully last year at summer camp God did a work in my heart. Slowly my feelings towards the relationship started to change. I started to care about him less and less untill I realized that I didn't have any romantic feelings towards him at all. And yet still I stayed latched onto him. But yet again God interviened and slowly began to chip away at the bond I felt with Michael until I finally got to the point where I was able to let go.

Yeah it still hurts a bit when I see a picture of him. And I think of him every time I see an episode of cops or jackass but that's what happens when you become intimate with someone. Souls are tied together and it takes a long time for them to be seperated.

So maybe it will take the full two and a half years to get over him completely, who knows? And who cares really? God works everything in His own time just like he uses everything for good.

Now I'm at a place where, while my heart longs for the attachment that a boyfriend brings, I have no desire to be with anyone. I don't want to date. I don't want to have a crush. I don't want to even think about getting married. I don't even want to persue a relationship with God so that I can be ready for my future husband. He has been taken out of the picture for present.

My priorities are different now. I'm not longer worried about preparing myself for my future husband because while I hope he's out there, he might not be. Now my main focus is to run as hard and as fast as I can towards God so that he can use me in this world. I want Him to guide me through every breath I take. I want to go deeper with Him than I ever thought possible. And maybe in a few years I'll look around and see whose running beside me. Maybe then I'll start thinking about marriage. But for now I feel a pull into the mission field and as we all know, women who go into the mission field either dating or married don't end up well.

It's going to be a long, hard road of healing before I get to the place I want to be spirtually. God still has a lot of work to do with me, some serious habitual sins that I can't fix on my own. But I know I'll be ok. Finally there is a light at the end of the road and though I fear the unknown life which God will help me through, I will no longer hide from it. As long as I have God guiding my way, there is nothing I need to fear.

It's over.

Two words have never cut me so deep.

It's over.

It's like a mantra, those two words keep flashing in my head all day. Even when I close my eyes, I see those bright flashing letters in my mind.

It's over.

Our relationship sucked, there was no doubt about that. I wouldn't have been able to go to college still dating him, it wouldn't have been possible. I always told myself that I would break up with him before I left, but it seems he beat me to punch.

It's pathetic really, I didn't even cry that much when my parents told me they were splitting up.

I've shead more tears for this boy, collectivley, than I have ever shead for anything else in my entire life.

It's just wierd to think that after four years, it's over.

Everything.

Done.

Finished.

Kaput.

I don't even think we'll be friends again after this.

That will be the hardest to deal with, not being friends anymore.

I just wish I had the answers. I wish he would tell me what I wanted to know, but he wont.

In fact, my asking questions is what spurred him on to say those two vile words.

He told me that he didn't think it was working out, between him and me. I told him that I didn't even know how to respond to that. Inevitably, before he could reply, I was overcome and I turned into the human water faucet. I said that I couldn't talk to him anymore and I left to go downstairs and I curled up in my comforter and waited for the tears to stop.

Then I took a shower.

We spoke again after that. He told me that all he wanted to do was talk about our relationship and he hadn't ment to break up with me, as I had previously thought, but since I had left, I had screwed up.

Apparently, he didn't care that I couldn't speak, or see, or even breathe for that matter due to the amount of fluid flowing from my eyes and nostrils.

I then asked him how long he had been waiting to tell me that it wasn't working. I half expected him to say a month or more.

He had said since this morning.

I asked him why.

He told me I asked too many damn questions.

Then he said, fuck this shit, it's over, bye.

And that was the last I heard from him. He boarded a plane to Miami that afternoon, and he is suppossed to return sometime tommorrow.

What kills me is, of course, the fact that it is basically all my fault. Of course, I wasn't the one that inniatiated the conversation in the morning, when asked why we didn't really talk anymore, I didn't give a detailed enough description, and when told that he thought it wasn't working, I couldn't hold back my tears long enough to have a discussion. Not to mention the fact that only a week or so ago I told him that I was having thoughts about the physical aspect of our relationship.

Clearly I had this coming, it was all my fault.

Want to know what the funny thing is?

If he called me after he got home, or if he dropped by my house, and said that he wanted to get back together, I would do it in a heartbeat.

I don't know what sort of hold he has over me, but I don't enjoy it.

He wasn't the only one that wanted to talk about the crap in our relationship.

There were things I wanted to tell him, that I was longing to tell him, but that never escaped my lips because I was scared of what he would do.

He has anger issues.

But, he never doted on me. He never called me beautiful to my face. He never inniatiated the kiss. He never seemed to want to take me out. He didn't touch me once his dick left my mouth, save for once. He never called, not unless I called him first. He seemed almost embarassed of me. He left for trips without telling me. He drank. He occasionally smoked, and not just cigerattes. He flirted with other girls. He lied to me, among other things.

He treated me more like a whore than a girlfriend.

At times, I half expected him to leave some money on the side table.

My mind and my heart have been warring with each other these past couple of months.

While my head tells me that he used me just like every other guy has used me, my heart insists that he ment what he said when he told me that he loved me.

His actions said one thing while his eyes said something else.

I don't know what to do now.

I have no one to talk to.

I told my good friend Sarah that we split, and she cheered.

Then she asked if I was alright.

It was like rubbing salt in an open wound.

I just want to stop hurting.

God, make me stop hurting.

I don't even feel stupid

I knew from the begenning that in order to have him I had to live up to certain standards.

In order to have him, I would have to give up certain morals I had grown up with my entire life. I would have to spit in the face of everything I believed.

It's wierd, reading over all of our conversations we've had in the past few years. It's strange to see how slowly but surley I began to give into him. I began to drift away from what I had been taught and started to embrace the things that he was telling me. I put the desires of my heart, my desire to be with him, over everything and everyone else.

He became my world. He was what I thought about, he was what I dremt about, he was what I cared about. He consumed me.

He broke past every single defence I had ever put up around myself, something that no one else has ever done, not even the people that I have known my entire life.

Strange that I've only known him for a total of four years, and one of those I hardly talked to him.

The big question now seems to be, why on earth did I latch onto him?

Well, the answer is, because of his eyes.

I met him in Freshman year, when I was crazy for a boy named David.

The first time I looked at him, my heart literally skipped a beat. He had nice dark brown hair that was, at the time, somewhat short and kinda spikey. He wasn't tan but freckled, something I always adored. He was tall, much taller than me, and just the right size. But, what I loved most about him was his eyes. Honeyed green with gold flecks surrounded by gorgeous long, dark eyelashes.

I've always been a sucker for a pair of nice eyes.

But, I felt only a small school girl crush for him at the time. After all, as previously mentioned, I was crazy for another boy.

Freshman year came and went, along with my feelings for David. However, Mr. Bright-Eyes and I had begun to talk. It was strange really. He IMed me one day and we talked for four hours about hot pockets and people at school and we became fast friends.

Sadly, he didn't come back to school, at least not mine, again. But, we talked almost every day for hours on end over the summer and my little crush began to grow. However, all my hopes were dashed around the begenning of Sophmore year when he announced that he had found someone.

My heart was pounded into the ground time and time again while he would talk about her, tell me how worried he was and talk to me about their physical relationship. Once in a while he would let me know that he would have dated me if it wern't for one thing or another.

Though, that last part was my fault. I had told him not too long after he began dating her that my feelings for him didn't go past friendship which, of course, was a complete and total lie.

After they broke up about a year later, me and him began hanging out and talking about dating.

That's when I started to break.

Everytime we would talk, he would tell me that he wanted to be with me, he would call me beautiful and say how it sucked for him to know that he couldn't ever have me because of my limits. Everytime my heart would break and I would tell him that my limits wern't as severe as he thought they were.

I began to consider loosening them up a bit, just a bit, so that I could be with him. I rationalized, thinking that really, him lightly brushing my toushie and going under my shirt wasn't that bad.

But then, I began to like the little things that he did and I would allow him to do just a bit more. Each time he went farther, he would ask if I was ok in the sweetest voice I had ever heard. He was always considerate, apologizing when I told him no and always making sure I was comfortable with him. He still does to this day, always asking if I'm alright, using the voice he's always used.

Not suprisingly, things began to eseclate. My shirt soon came off, then his pants, and eventually mine. We never had sex thankfully, but we might as well have. Then I wouldn't currently be stuck in what I like to call 'virginity limbo.'

That was two years ago, and he and I have been off and on ever since. We always seem to come back to each other, no matter what was said or done to break it off in the first place. He's like a drug that I just cant seem to kick, and I don't think I ever will.

I love this boy.

I've given up almost everything for him.

It breaks my heart to see how our relationship has changed. He's not the same boy I fell for in the begenning, but my heart still belongs to him.

We've stopped talking about things, stopped goofing around with each other. Our relationship revolves around the physical things, and at times it makes me want to end it once and for all.

But then he says something that makes me melt. He looks at me with those eyes and I forget everything, the words are still on my tongue. My heart breaks for the things he goes through on a daily basis. His life is far from easy and I'd give the world to switch places with him, just so that he wouldn't have to deal with stuff like that anymore.

It's strange though, we've never even kissed. I hugged him for the first time ever on wednessday. I'm not sure how things got to this point and I don't know how my whole world was turned upside down without my noticing, but I'm here none the less.

I fell in love with a boy.

I'm still in love with a boy.

And the funny thing is, I don't even feel stupid for everything that's happend.

I'm a mess, I know. Our relationship, our almost nonexistent relationship that a precious few know about, is a mess. I know that all this is wrong and I should be running as fast as I can away from it, but it's the curst of the Sanders. We always fall for the wrong ones.

Shaken Up

They were in love.

They were in love.

I honestly never thought it was possible.

My whole life, I thought of a million diffrent reasons as to why he wasn't around, why he didn't want me. I figured that since he was never there, he must not have cared.

I thought that perhaps she had been raped.

I thought that maybe she had been a whore and I was the result of a one night stand.

I thought that he could have been just some bastard who had only said the words but had never ment them, and bolted at the first sign of trouble.

Not once did it ever cross my mind that they might have actualy loved one another. Never did I think that though the circumstances were crappy, that I was actualy born out of love.

It's wierd, I'm happy yet horribly frustrated at the same time.

It just makes it that much harder to figure out why he would have left, why he wasn't there. Maybe she wanted to protect him and so she broke up with him before she started showing and just never mentioned me.

I tend to like that reasoning, just because it means that he might have actualy been a decent guy.

I still can't seem to wrap my brain around it, though.

I was born out of love.

They loved each other.

Jewel loved Juan until the day she died.

Jewel and Juan, my parents.

I know who I am now.

There's nothing left

I feel like an empty shell.

Everything that was once in me has been scooped out and dumped into the trash.

I could barley find the strength to get out of bed this morning.

I wish I felt like I did last night. I wish I still felt the pain that was so intense I wanted to scream.

But for now, I'm numb. Just numb. I don't have the strength to act alright, I barley have the strength to breathe.

And you know what the kicker is?

It's all my fault.

I fell in love with him.

I allowed things to happen that never should have.

I gave my heart and parts of myself to him because he gave me the one thing that I wanted most in the world, he told me things that I had longed to hear my entire life.

He acted like a band-aid that covered the void left by my dad's and now it's gone.

I lost my best friend last night.

I cried more than I have in ten years.

I wish I could just wake up and have everything be a dream.

"But it does not do to dwell on dreams, and forget to live."

I'm not naive. I didn't tell him those things last night thinking that in the end, everything would be alright.

But I certainly didn't think they would end up as bad as they did.

I thought that we could still talk and be friends just like we had the last time we stopped.

But now he hates me.

Now he thinks I care for someone else.

I broke his heart and it kills me.

I hate myself for what I did.

I hate him for not understanding.

I hate my heart for falling for him so hard.

I hate the way things turned out.

But I really hate the fact that it was the right thing to do.

The question is, what am I going to do now?

Heartbreak

Just got back from Winter Retreat not too long ago and my head is spinning. It was awesome and I am so glad I went.

I got an idea for a new book and got the first few pages done last night before I went to bed. It will be my first shot at a religious fiction novel and I'm excited about it. Perhaps this will be the one that I will send off to the publishers.

But, one thing that I wasn't so happy about when it came to winter retreat, was the fact that it brought light to this one relationship that I'm in. I'm not dating anyone, and I haven't been really. But I have been seeing this one boy every so often, the same boy I've been seeing for the past few years. I know it isn't a good relationship for me to be in and the things we do aren't right, but I care about him.

He is the first person to call me beautiful to my face. He is the first one that actualy cares about me. He hasn't used me as far as I know and he likes my little quirks. He makes me feel beautiful and bottom line he makes me feel.

I care about him more than I have ever cared about anyone else. He has always been there for me.

I fought for him, I fought to keep him so hard and now I have to let him go.

I hate what I'm doing, I wish things could be diffrent but I can't do this anymore espically without a commitment.

This is gonna be hell.

Heartbreak, here I come.

Letter from Satan

I was on myspace and I saw a bulliten with the header, "Letter from Satan," so I decided to check it out. Here it is, I thought ya'll might like to read it.

Letter From the Devil
I saw you yesterday as you began your daily chores. You awoke without kneeling to pray. As a matter of fact, you didn't even bless your meals, or pray before going to bed last night. You are so unthankful, I like that about you. I cannot tell you how glad I am that you have not changed your way of living, Fool, you are mine. Remember,you and I have been going steady for years and I still don't love you yet. As a matter of fact, I hate you, because I hate God. I am only using you to get even with God. He kicked me out of heaven, and I'm going to use you as long as possible to pay him back. You see, Fool, GOD LOVES YOU and HE has great plans in store for you. But you have yielded your life to me, and I'm going to make your life a living hell. That way, we'll be together twice. This will really hurt God. Thanks to you, I'm really showing Him who's boss in your life with all of the good times we've had. We have been watching dirty movies, cursing people out, stealing, lying, being hypocritical, fornicating, overeating, telling dirty jokes, gossiping, being judgmental, back stabbing people, disrespecting adults, and those in leadership positions, no respect for the Church, bad attitudes. SURELY you don't want to give all this up. Come on, Fool, let's burn together forever. I've got some hot plans for us. This is just a letter of appreciation from me to you. I'd like to say "THANKS" for letting me use you for most of yourfoolish life. You are so gullible, I laugh at you. When you are tempted to sin, you give in HA HA HA, you make me sick. Sin is beginning to take it's toll on your life. You look 20 years older, andnow, I need new blood. So go ahead and teach some children how to sin. All you have to do is smoke, get drunk or drink while under-aged, cheat, gamble, gossip, fornicate, and live being as selfish as possible. Do all of this in the presence of children and they will do it too. Kids are like that. Well, Fool, I have to let you go for now. I'll be back in a couple of seconds to tempt you again. If you were smart, you would run somewhere, confess you sins, and live for God with what little bit of life that you have left. It's not my nature to warn anyone, but to be your age and still sinning, it's becoming a bit ridiculous. Don't get me wrong, I still hate you.
IT'S JUST THAT YOU'D MAKE A BETTER FOOL FOR CHRIST.
P.S. If you really love me, you WON'T share this