It's been a very long while.

So for those of you who care to read this (I'm not real sure you actually exist) I'll update you a little on my life.

After graduation I had the most amazing summer of my life. When I wasn't working with the cutest kids known to man, I was off having a blast with my favorite people before college. I went camping twice within two weeks of each other and met an amazing boy on the second trip - a friend of a friend. We spent the next four months slowly getting to know each other via the electronic pen pal way (aka Facebook) since he had just moved to Tacoma for school. And somewhere along the way, I fell for him.

Pretty damn hard.

It was strange, though, because he's the sort of person I could never have imagined myself with, personality wise. He was the type of person I never would have been friends with in high school, but for some reason, we just worked. The attraction was palpable, and the chemistry was sparkly.

It was probably the most important part of 2008, for me. Or, at least the most prevalent part.

Somewhere around the end of November, things started going awry. I was always aware of the fact that college is college and that people are less likely to be accountable for the choices they make. My almost-but-not-quite boyfriend was struggling to survive academically, and to adjust to the college way of life. It broke my heart to see him like that, and I had to make a few choices of my own concerning my relationship with him. Regardless of the shit he'd been getting into, something made me feel that giving up on him would be the wrong course of action. So I didn't.

On December first, I came home from work and got on Facebook to find that my almost-but-not-quite boyfriend...was somebody else's boyfriend. I mostly remember being a little dizzy and confused as hell.

That was probably one of the hardest conversations I'd ever had with somebody. I respect him a great deal for outright telling me that he had this shiny, brand-new girlfriend. Didn't make it hurt any less. It was interesting, though, seeing as he also told me that he still had feelings for me, and wished the timing would have worked out better. (I don't understand boys..)

My sister was mad.
My friends were mad.
And, a part of me wanted to be angry, but I wasn't.

I had the most interesting reaction to the whole ordeal. I was, uncharacteristically, stark-raving calm. That same feeling that told me not to give up on him also told me to have a lot grace for him. So I did. Because I came to the conclusion the he got scared. He told me once that he had been extremely hurt in a previous relationship and didn't want that to ever be an option again. Accuracy be damned, I am under the impression that he got so scared of the potential he saw in us that he simply ran, because he had no other way of dealing with it. I actually began to feel weirdly optimistic about the whole thing. From this experience, I decided to spend a lot of my time praying for him and being a good friend. But, through all that optimism, I forgot to stop and realize that I'd had my heart broken. I spent a lot of time learning to simply be okay with having a broken heart. Its all just a matter of adjusting and adapting - a lot like having a broken arm. It hurts like hell, but thats only because its healing.

I feel like I've aged, mentally, about twenty-nine years in the last six months. Eighteen going on forty-seven is a tough gig, but I bear it well, I think. =]

Somewhere amidst all that mental growth I started college and ended my first term with a solid 3.0 GPA. I was very proud of myself. I'm currently halfway through my second term and have been making some new friends, which is always good. I'm kind of excited to see what the next six months have in store for me.

We'll have to see how that goes.

<3