bad timing, I guess.

I couldn’t pass on it. Not after three wasted years. All that time to ponder ‘what if’ and now here, finally was my chance. I knew I had to take it, but I knew it was bad timing.

I’m getting a little ahead of myself. Maybe I should start from the beginning…

She was a friend of a friend, but that’s not how we got to know each other. It was, well, here on OD of all places that we began to really talk. That was back when there were many more people I knew on OD and most of them never really used it as a diary in any form, but I digress. The casual diary interaction soon led to more personal forms of communication (ICQ and phone conversations). After a few months of this we discovered a few things: we had a lot in common, we enjoyed talking endlessly and we both were having the same problems with relationships. We realized at that point that maybe what we needed was each other. We decided to try dating, but perhaps it was too hasty.

I’m still not a hundred percent sure why things didn’t work out back then, but I’ve always felt that it was my fault. I think the best way I can describe it is to say that I was uneasy about being in a relationship with someone who had been my confidant for so long, someone who knew things about me that my best friends didn’t know. I guess I couldn’t look into her eyes without feeling judged. I was uneasy with myself.

I broke things off. She was hurt by it and it took a while for us to actually be able to talk again. It wasn’t the same, though, I became afraid to talk about anything meaningful with her. Eventually we drifted apart. My own personal issues had prevented me from allowing her into my life at all, even though she was someone who was so important to me before that.

Now, fast forward a few years. During this period, we had begun talking again. Still nothing meaningful it was more of a courtesy gesture. However, something else very important took place in that span of years: I came to identify with myself. Gone were the instabilities of my past and in their place was a newfound confidence and self-security. I had rediscovered the artistic side of me that I had tried to blanket in social correctness. I was expanding my horizons in every way and making amends and contacts to those I felt I had neglected in the past. One of these would eventually be her. I contacted her and we arranged to finally get together again after all this time. It took a few failed attempts for us to actually meet up, but it was well worth the wait.

I immediately noticed two things about her. First, how much she had grown and changed. The cute young teenager I once knew had now become a beautiful young woman. The second was how her warm personality had not changed and how readily she accepted me, despite the fact that I had hurt her before. I realized then the magnitude of the mistake I had made before. She never deserved to be hurt like that – not by me, not by anyone. I swore to myself that I would never hurt her in any way again.

We went out a few more times again as friends, having a blast each and every time, even when all we did was walk around for a few hours and talk. Pretty soon I realized that I was falling for this girl all over again.

Before I decided to tell her about my feelings, she asked me, as she had obviously suspected me of feeling the way I did. I told her how I felt and asked her if that was what she was expecting and if it was what she wanted. She replied that yes, she had expected it but she was unsure about whether she wanted it for many reasons. There was the first obvious reason of not wanting to get hurt again and a second reason that had not really occurred to me. It was the end of July and in a month we would be both be going away to school, me to Belleville and her all the way to Nova Scotia. It was then that I received the papercut from the pages of the Fairy Tale book that I had been turning. It might have been too late for us.

We decided to go out again the following week, but this time we knew it would be different as all agendas were now common knowlegde between us. After our movie was out we sat down on a sheltered bench and decided to wait out the storm that was passing over us. We talked (and didn’t), but then after a long while something happened. It was what I would describe as a ‘release’. I playfully grabbed ahold of her, but it immediately became obvious that neither of us wanted to let go. That was it. That was the moment in which all of our hopes and fears were realized. Whether we liked it or not, the attachment had been made.

This brings us now to the present, where we have continued to see each other and our bond is stronger than ever. Yet the threat of having to leave each other hangs lower over our heads than ever before. Right now I’m not sure what it is I should do. You see I’m what you would call a ‘hopeless romantic’, I believe in the whimsicality that we could continue our relationship over such a long distance, but I feel that maybe I should my love for her by letting her go, not forcing her to be tied to me so far away. Most importantly, I can’t help but thinking that I’m about to do what I swore I never would – hurt her again by leaving. I feel really lost. Everytime I’m with her I wish we could just live in a photograph for all eternity, never having to go or be separated, but that’s not the reality of the situation. Please, if anyone has any advice, it would be greatly appreciated.

“Oh all for the sake of a foolish love.”