Mattering.

I think its time to talk.

It was mid-September. There wasn't a single week since the summer in which there was a night that I didn't cry myself to sleep. Every day was an argument, a fight. He called me names I never imagined. While I waited to hear him speak again, he came and left and came and left. Midnight was punctuated with meaningless apologies. They say (and by they, I credit C.S. Lewis) to love at all is to be vulnerable. I was undoubtedly shed of every protection I ever knew. Parts of me were completely foreign; I made them up, so I could construct more love, more desperation. I expected weakness to become strength, but instead, it destroyed me.

I fought it. I begged. I have never begged before, but now, I was pleading on my knees.  I drew copies of Bone and Calvin and Hobbes, pictures of immortalized friendship. They are still tear-stained. I sent unreturned messages. Everything I did was through a blur of tears. I went to school every other day with my eyelids stuck, still swollen. At assemblies, I sat, immobile. Then I got up and cried in the bathroom. I begged, come back. Please come back. Then it was the only thing I ever heard. I sat in history, English, physics, math, hearing only one thing in my head. Come back. And all he said was go away. For every go away, there were a hundred come backs.

He said he was lost, lost without me. Lost because we used to know each other's deepest secrets, and now we were afraid to share. Lost because we could pray into each other's shoulders. Lost because after a long day, we were each other's light, a little comfort in this phony world. But boys are so dumb. We were lost a long time ago.

One day, I woke up, and I was done. In a split second, my heart closed. My emotions froze. I got up and smiled at my teachers' jokes and appreciated my friends' love stories. Slowly, I started throwing things away. I shoved clothes into the basement. These belongings were forgotten, because you do not belong in my life. The pain all but disappeared, because you no longer matter.

We talked recently. You shafted me, again. You said you cared; you said you wanted to be friends again. But in truth, I could care less. Do you remember when I begged you? I'm sick of you.

Here's what matters now. I'm also sick of relationships. I barely believe in love. There's no couple in this school or college or world who can convince me that something deep and genuine can result from romance. There is no man of any stature or intelligence or suavity that can steal my heart. But here's another matter - I love all relationships. Without so much expectation, they are so easy. My friends, a great deal of them, especially, hold a standard of the golden zero. Disappointment is replaced by careless acceptance. I find a great deal of meaning in friendship, in chilling. I am done lying and hiding.