She's happy.

He loved her. He kept thinking it to himself over and over. “Holy shit, I really love this woman.” She was rambling on about getting cut off on the freeway yet again, and how LA is such a horrible city which she would never even think of moving away from. And while he was simultaneously thinking, “This is pretty much the most annoying conversation I’ve ever had in my life” along with “Since we’re in traffic, it wouldn’t hurt that bad to throw her out of the car would it?” He also thought, “My God, she is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.”
He had wanted to tell her for years. Boyfriend after boyfriend, asshole after asshole, and he was there right beside her for all of it. But she would never see him that way. They were best friends, and she always reassured him that this meant more to her than any other relationship she had ever had or would ever have. He knew she loved him, there was no way that he couldn’t know that. But she didn’t love him the way he wanted, no needed, her to. He felt nervous every time she walked into a room, much less held him or lay with him on a couch when either one of them were feeling down. He ached every time he saw her with someone else or even heard of her being with someone else. And yet, he did nothing. After three years of torture, the inexorable aching within him did not abate. It became a pain that he had grown accustomed to, accepted, and almost felt comfortable with and insecure without. “She can never know” was also a constant thought in his mind. “It will just ruin everything” was another.
And so, he left. She did not want him and he knew it. She would never see him the way he always saw her. She would fall in love again, with someone else, and he could not take sitting back and watching her do so one more time. He let her go, and resolved that though he would be in constant anguish for the rest of his life, at least he knew that she’d be happy. He was gone merely one year, and upon his return, he was to attend her engagement party. A man named Jim, or John, or even Jacob for all he knew or cared to know.
She opened the door of her parents’ house in which the party would take place. He looked up at her. She had never looked at him that way before, it was a look he was not familiar with, and he was certain he had not forgotten a single one of her faces that he constantly thought about. A tear streamed down her right cheek, she gave a half smile, and fell into his arms sobbing. He held her close, smelling her neck, stroking her hair, becoming intoxicated with everything about her. She whispered in his ear, “It should be you I’m marrying,” wiped her eyes and led him into the house with a smile. A million thoughts ran through his head, had she always known? Did she love him too? Why would she say such a thing? Does she even love this Jim John Jacob man?
But inside the house stood the Jim John Jacob man, who’s name was actually Dean. Dean kissed the love both their lives, and just like that the hope that she had placed in his heart was struck down by the familiar aching within him. “She looks happy” he thought, “just like I knew she would.”

Hold On

We said that we’d be friends forever, and that we’d be in each other’s weddings, and our children would play together, the works. Basically that we’d be friends for the rest of our lives. At the time, I honestly believed that it was possible. That we could overcome whatever adversity life had in store for us, and that nothing would change even though we were all moving away from each other. And at first, that’s exactly how it was. We each did our best to make sure that although everything was completely different, we all pretended like everything was still the same. I would have never imagined how our relationships would change. We were supposed to be best friends, whatever that means. But when you really care about people with all of your heart, you tend to not want to disappoint them, and when you live hundreds of miles away it becomes quite easy if not instinctual to merely stop telling them the details of your life.

I had left town with the intention of never coming back. All that had happened in that town was in my past. I took both the terrible, terrible times in my life as well as some of the best memories I can ever hope to have with me to the city. However, that’s all they were to me once I moved: memories. Moments that had passed and that had no ability to ever come back. Of course there would be times of reminiscing, but that would be all it was, attempting to recall events that were long gone. But now I fear that in leaving all this behind, and instead moving out and moving on with my life in the city, that I have compromised all this, and have detached myself from not only my hometown but the people in it as well. One of the hardest things for me to do after I moved was to open myself up to new people because I had felt that I had already found the people that I wanted to share my life with. But as it turned out, it began to feel like those people were part of some past life, and I was forced to adapt to entirely new surroundings and develop completely new relationships.

Initially, I think I misunderstood the whole best friend ideal. I was taught that you shouldn’t have to talk to your closest friends all the time, because the true test would be if everything was the same when you actually had the chance to talk with them again. But what I didn’t know was that it wasn’t necessary or even a good idea at all for you to totally cut yourself off from people, just to test the theory. It all comes down to the people. If you care about the people in the way that you’d honestly do anything for them, then you should make that clear. If it so happens that you don’t feel as inclined as you once did, to tell them every intimate detail of your life, then maybe you shouldn’t. But that doesn’t mean that you let go of all ties completely. Rather, while you maybe be more comfortable with loosening said ties, you must hold on. Loving someone in any sense of the word must come with sacrifice. If you’re not willing to make any sacrifices for anyone else, then don’t make such a commitment by saying that you love them.

Possibility

What is it about relationships that changes us? I used to think that it was the sex that changed you, and while I’m sure that it has something to do with it, I know that it’s not everything. Maybe it’s the thing that is the hugest factor in every aspect of our lives: the people. With every friend, relative, lover, co-worker, etcetera comes the possibility of a new aspect of our lives. Something about ourselves that we never really thought of or new was inside us. This possibility, the chance of something within us changing is the most exciting part about meeting new people. There are those people who indeed very much bring out the worst in us. But in the same way are the people who change us for the better. Make us learn that there are good things, in many cases very good things, within us.

If the people that have known us the longest have more potential to have a greater impact on us, why do we feel so much more comfortable telling all our secrets to complete strangers? Is it because we feel there is a slightly smaller chance of them judging us since they know nothing about us? Or because there is that brand new possibility of their ability to change us? Maybe, there isn’t a possibility of them having any impact on our lives at all and this is the most attractive part of strangers. You can get in and get out without a scratch of judgment or guilt on you and leaving you as completely content with who and how you are as you were in the first place. And it is this that makes such a possibility irresistible, that there is no effect through judgement. Thus, coming away from this, in essence the greatest impacting possibility is that what we are all most afraid of is being judged, especially by people who we care so much about.