I'm feeling a little better this week, mainly due to a couple of patient listeners. It's still not like regular old Helena in here, but I don't think it will ever be. I'm worried, though, because I don't like the idea of becoming the bitter type. I want to stay trusting, I want to be a kind and positive person. I feel myself becoming more cynical, laughing at things that people say in love scenes. That doesn't feel like me...who is that?

There are things I have to learn to accept. Life changes, we change, and there's nothing we can do about it. We can't be the same person forever; a part of us is constant, and a part of us changes. I think about what I was like five years ago, before the relationship, before independence, and I realize that I've accomplished and learned a great deal--but that I've also lost big pieces of myself. Some of those pieces weren't even there before. It's like they appeared, and grew, and then I had to get rid of them. I don't want to use cancer as an analogy, but it's all I can think of. So I had to get rid of them, and in the process I lost a little of what I was before, cutting around them. And they left these ugly marks on me, these gouges and scars.

In some ways I want to be proud of those scars, because they show what I've been through, they make me who I am. In other ways they sadden me, and I wish I could just be 15 and dumb, believing in things that seemed improbable but possible to me: I'd meet one magical boy one magical day who would make everything right, the world was full of good people who wanted to be kind to me, I could change everything just by wanting to, no one I loved would die or leave, and (especially) that bad things didn't happen to good people.

So yeah, it turns out it's not like that.

But I think this might cheer me up.