I just want you to be happy.

It's an unusual feeling, the one you get when you outgrow a friendship. I feel nauseous all the time when I think about it, there's no other way to be. Along with fears of abandonment, conflict and exclusion; also present in my heart is a fear of love. I could spend years discussing if my issues with both friendship and romance are a result of my upbringing or just my own persona, divorced from any external influence. But the reality is that I have to break someone's heart and my own and it's not the first time. I have a friend who put me on a pedestal and loved me more than I ever deserved. I, in turn, idealised them and treated them as cotton wool to shield me from the world. They built me up and both believed in and tolerated me at the very best and worst of times for me. When I was younger I needed someone to be that for me and for the longest time I thought I still needed that.

But I sabotaged that friendship recently; I have to believe out of a concerted desire to just bring out our demise rather than dread it any longer. I feel like an actor in our relationship because regardless of how much I love my friend, I don't love what I become every time I am around them. I regress and I allow their high opinion of me to make me obnoxious, too comfortable and too smug. I don't think our friendship is real anymore and it hasn't been for a while now. We're both putting on fake smiles and I think I'm figuring out why.

My friend loved me. Was in love with me. And, as arrogant and conceited as this may sound, will always at least remember those feelings when they look at me. In a sick way I think I have always known that and for a long time I enjoyed knowing I could be that sort of figure to someone. I've never been in a relationship, partially because nobody I have ever wanted has ever wanted me back and partially because I am incapable of dealing with emotions the way most people do. I think this friendship was a pseudo-relationship for me and the longer that I protested that everything was fine the more I realised that it could never be. Because though- at least for a certain period of time- I enjoyed the way my friend looked at me; I can't sit across the table from somebody who sees me that way. I never could. I ran from somebody I could have truly loved because of my inability to be held in that kind of mythical esteem by someone and I have run from more than one person who could have been a great friend to me for the same reason.

I feel sad that this might reflect the way I'll behave for the rest of my life. I am not behaving rationally or regularly and that may become a pattern I never break. I don't want to be idolised and I don't want people to put me in the centre of their world, not even in a good way (ha, as though there could be one). I am hypocritical because I have obsessed over people and loved them just as much as I claim to have been loved. How would I feel if my victims told me they were as unwilling as I am? But I can't help who I am and that is someone who is squiriming all the time because she exploits those who need her because it's the only way she knows how to be and it's hurting her, too.

Mostly I want my friend to be happy. They're amazing and they will have a great life with or without me. It's time to not be friends anymore, at least for a while. I am sorry for my inability to tell them in any softened way and for the way this realisation has happened but I can't apologise for what I know is the right thing. We stopped being good for each other a while ago and though I could continue pretending for our sake or our other friends' sake, I won't let my life be a shadow of what it could have been because I continue to make decisions based on other people rather than myself. I owe us both the opportunity to grow up. This is not an opinion I wish to discuss or defend or alter. It is one I have fought enough myself. It's time to articulate it and move on.

If I wrote "Mission Accomplished" as a closing note, the irony might just kill me.

Yippee ki yay.

My family continues to be a powder keg. Sometimes I think I'm the flame retardant standing by and sometimes I think I'm the spark. Friday night saw more yelling and slamming doors. Shelley's apartment today smelled like the holiday units we've stayed in during previous summers. I remember those places as neutral environments that acted like blank canvasses, clean slates, somewhere for our family to be different than we were before. And every year we'd come home again and find ourselves unchanged and miserable as ever, always one moment away from blowing up. I spent this weekend wondering whether, while I'm gone, my father's juvenile behaviour will subside in the face of my sister's indifference and mother's exhaustion. What do I do for my family dynamic that I will not be here to do for the next few months?

Andrea has taught me that the key to a good action movie is explosions. I guess I wonder if my actions, in leaving or just being a part of this family, make me the villain or the hero. And whether the aftermath may justify the lighting of our fuse.

A heart plus a heart.

You're never going to lose me. I'm made out of glue.

You stitched me up when I was falling apart and loved me more than I could ever have asked to be loved. You placed my head on your shoulder every day of one of the hardest years of my life. You held my hand, giggled at my jokes, stroked my hair... you were everything that I needed at a very dark time for me. I manipulated you, I think, promised you - through lies of omission - something that I couldn't give you. I wasn't able, at that time, to give much of anything to anyone. But I'm sorriest of all for the things I wasn't able to give you. I will always be jealous of anyone you love the way you loved me. And anyone you love more than you loved me.

You're not boring. You're not forgettable. And you're not mine.

I'm going to go away and learn to be the person you always told me I could be. You've always believed in me and idealised me in a way that I needed. I can never thank you enough for thinking I am better than I am. Your over confidence in what I can do will most likely put me over the line in the days I am sure to feel like I want to give in to the voices in my head that tell me I'm worthless. But I'm going to try my hardest not to miss when you saw a light lining my shadow. And I know you're never going to see that there again.

I think we're both going to have to be okay with that.

Things are looking up, oh finally.

Things that might be good rather than bad:

* The possibility of a Canadian working visa.
* A different trip than I'd planned. One that puts me in Canada for the summer.
* Angry rants at certain long-suffering friends.
* A day off work here and there. It offers possibilities of baking and chai lattes in the city.
* A haircut. Oh, gawd, the mullet is getting gross.
* Cancelling travel insurance, UK visa application and long-standing beliefs.
* Rearranging everything. Everything.

Louder than sirens, louder than bells.

My week. Hmm. My week.

I stepped on a small piece of broken glass in bare feet. I realised I most likely won't qualify for a working visa so will have to rely on my wits in Europe. My wounds from the fall I had over a week ago are still healing rather slowly and the scab on my knee just gets grosser. I got downgraded from full time at work to two days a week. I'm not sleeping properly. I owe my parents a lot more money than I am currently making because I was given an hour and a half's notice that I was losing a lot of work. I'm lonely all the time and it's so much more my fault than anything else's because I push everyone away at the worst possible times and then cling to them without explanation.

My mood is refusing to improve. I'm trying, I really am. I have this deep set belief that what you project, good or bad, is what is returned to you in life. So I feel like all of this is happening because I've made mistakes or been cruel or selfish. And I know that if I continue to be negative and nasty and useless that it'll only get worse. It's just so hard to ignore all of the things that are hurting so much right now.

If I was happier and friendlier at work then maybe this would *stop* happening. Maybe they'd find the hours for me. If I could get my teen angst together and get over myself, people would want to hang out with me and I'd want to hang with them and we could enjoy whatever time is left for me here in Melbourne. Maybe I could be more careful with my body and my mind and the hurts would stop finding me so easily.

It's all about hope, really. Every single terrible thing that happens, and every single great thing too. All that is present in my life right now and all that is coming. I'm trying to process and articulate experiences with that in mind.

And at the end of it all, you're waiting there in my head. Like a shadow standing in this ambiguous doorway that I want to be ready to step through but aren't yet. I want to come with you but I need to find you properly first. I've never been sure about you, of who you really are, but I know you're perfect for me. Or perfect for who I plan to be. When I've evolved enough, sorted all this out- sorted me out- I want us to be together. Whatever that means. Wait for me. Or find me first?

We're still holding hands through a catflap, aren't we?

I had my tarot read last night and it was beautiful. It was frightening and mysterious and confusing. For what it was, it was beautiful.

I also learnt about Buddhism, meditation and the inner lives of two of my good friends.

It's too soon to talk about it. It was too soon last night and I don't know when I'll be ready. But I want to be ready. A lot happened yesterday, the details of which I can't really articulate. But it was magical in a really melancholy, unexpected way.

Today I simply recovered from everything I discovered last night.

Please destroy me this way.

You told me we shouldn't talk and it's the last thing I want but I'm doing it. And now you're everywhere in my head and this isn't new or unexpected. I'm trying so hard to let you go because I truly believe it's what you want. But is it possible I'm doing something wrong there, too? I hope not. I hope you're well. I love you, always, regardless of what I say or write to contradict that statement. Really.

I fell.

So now I'm off work and sitting on my bed, alone, since Trina left me happier than I can remember being in some time. We had tea, ate too much cake and she gave me a lot of gifts, some physical and some not. One was a book. Another was the realisation that there is hope. For her, especially, and for me also. I'm $120 poorer for staying home today but I don't feel it.

I think I will make dinner for my mother tonight. She's been impressing people for almost a month now and I think it's exhausting her. I need her to know she is loved here, too, though maybe not so blindly. I think that's better, really, and I hope she does too.