I'm a girl. This journal is almost 10 years old, when I started it, I called it Almost 21. Before that, I had a journal called Soap on a domain that no longer exists. Some things have changed since then, some things haven't. I always wanted to be a writer. I live out that dream here.
He thinks I live in the past. I don't, entirely. Sometimes I like to think about the things that could go wrong, and cry about those too. I don't know why... maybe it's because I like to cry. Maybe it's because it makes me appreciate him more. Maybe it's because I know those things will never happen.
But I do like to think about the past. I like to think about the way things were - the way I was - a broken bird. He picked me up and fixed my wings and taught me how to fly. He accepted me for who I was: he didn't judge me, he didn't question me.
He listened to me, through all my boy problems. No matter how much it hurt him. He taught me how to trust people again. He taught me how to love myself. And at the beginning, when I was worried that I would never be able to reciprocate his love because I had been broken so many times and feared myself incapable of loving again, the thing I feared most was that I would die lonely.
Here was this wonderful, perfect guy, who had confessed that he was in love with me, and I was convinced that I would never love again. I did not fathom that I would ever feel this way.
About anyone.
That first sober kiss in the park - on the Sunday afternoon, the day after Octoberfest, when we had lain on the grass for hours trying to chase away my hangover - I had run away from because it felt wrong, and I was scared. A year later I was to find that I could not get enough of these kisses. I never stopped to ask myself why I was scared. I had never been scared where boys were concerned, never. But looking back I realise it was because I always knew that, with the boys I had been with, if they said something - they didn't mean it.
He was genuine, and I was afraid of hurting him.
The summer afternoons we would spend making out in 'our' park, until the sun had set and the chilly breeze drove us home - the afternoons we don't have time for anymore and I can still see months later, lying underneath the very same tree staring at the sky through the leaves trying to make sense of the amazing feeling that rushes through me.
We are shyer now. Older. We care that people will see us - that we will make them uncomfortable. We care that the back of the car is too uncomfortable to have sex in. We worry that if we make love in the park, someone will come and murder us. He cares less when I cry. I cry more.
Things change. Things always change. We adjust. We change. Sometimes, we forget what matters.
It's more than just "i like to cry". The tears are a reminder, of all things that matter. A reminder that it's time to let someone you care about know how much you love them, and how much they mean to you.
Had I realised this sixteen years ago, I would have stopped my mother from scolding the housemaid for making me cry. Too timid I was then, to admit that I was sorry for once accusing her of not being my real mother, that the song on the radio had reminded me, and that I was crying because I loved her more than she knew.
So, when she asked me why I was crying, I blamed the housemaid.