Acts 12:2

It still hurts. I thought it didn't any more, that I'd stopped thinking about it long enough that it'd just gone away, but it hasn't. Being asked on the LGD about who I'd want to see and what I'd say to them when I get the chance brought it all back. I refused to cry. Refused to let everyone see. It took me 5 minutes to answer. Five minutes of sheer determination not to let those emotions show, although it was obvious by my standing there - it had everyone around me in tears with me not crying.

It doesn't help that I'm finally willing to let myself be somewhat emotionally vunerable again, to let someone know that they matter -that what they think of me matters to me, that I could be hurt. Does he realize that's what I was telling him? I don't think so -not fully at least. I hold on so tight because I'm afraid of it ending.

It's strange in a way, but the memory that has been playing through my head of late has almost nothing to do with him, yet everything to do with him. It was one of the summers that we e-mailed each other at least once a week. It must have been between 5th and sixth grade. That summer, I spent a lot of my time running round the neighborhood with a neighbor boy. We rough housed a lot, and when it came to water, we had an extreme escalation factor. There was a little squirt bottle of water in the house, and our 'fights' usually started there, and within 2 or 3 minutes, it had escalated from that to water guns to hoses and sneak attacks with gallon buckets filled with water. We had just started one of these battles, and I had rushed outside to find the water gun first (we only had one). My mom was checking the e-mail, and there was one for me. I dropped everything to reply to it, as I always did. I crawled in through the dining room window, and started typing a quick response - it had to be fast, b/c the neighbor boy had found the water gun and was waiting for me outside the open window. When I had sent my e-mail, I was out the window at a run. Just that brief moment of everything stopping, the exhilaration of running and chasing and playing juxtaposed with the excitement of hearing from him - seems to mean so much to me.

I miss that friendship. I still sometimes expect to hear from him - to get on-line on Friday night and chat or to see him. Letting there be emotions means dealing with these emotions, applying them to different circumstances, learning from the past, and making different decisions - different mistakes than I made last time.