I can't get my thoughts cleared up here. Although, I'm not sure how much good dwelling time would do for me tonight.

I try not to let things get to me- and that's maybe not such a good approach to take. Because I can only shield off the world for so long, and not dealing with things makes it so they all hit hard and at once.

I am really upset that when I was talking to Ben earlier, he told me he thinks maybe it's better if I stay out here next year. I agree- maybe it is better. But I don't know if that makes it any easier to hear. I was hoping maybe he'd say he wanted me at Coe next year- I know I'm happier out here. And he can know I'm happier out here. That doesn't change anything though.

It's not that I want a relationship either. It's that, as a friend, I don't know. It's really selfish of me, to want so badly for him to want me in his life. I mean, if I was suffocating before, maybe it's better if I just shy away. But he seems to redefine what I would think of as what a friend should be...

I don't want friends who talk intimatly when they feel like it, and who only give the cold hard truth when they offer advice. I want people who are there for me whenever I need them- and who I can be there for.

I'm turning this into something bigger than it should be- or maybe I'm not. I'm not saying he's a bad friend. I don't know what I'm saying. Would other people be hurt by this situation?

He's from a different world, a different lifestyle.

I need to know when my friends care, and when they love me. He doesn't. *sigh*

Also, there's fighting going on here agian tonight. Maybe I would've been better off in Redmond- although that doesn't change the fact that I really didn't want to go. I don't know.

I know I need my own friends out here... and that will happen, with time. It's not anything I want to rush, though. And for the most part, I am happy being here a lot. Even if there is fighting, and even if it takes a bit of energy to get past the bad moods that sometimes hit.

It's like... you get used to things being alright. You have a few very close friends, and you love them a lot. But then, there's also a place that feels like home. And you can't decide which is more important- because out of everything that's ever been important to you, people have always been at the top. But you could make new friends in this new place- and then you'd be happier than you'd been ever since the world became a real place, and other people started to have their lives in it.

It wasn't always a real place. The people here used to revolve around me, and I was the only one who really existed. Not in a selfish way, so much, but in a way that I just wasn't a big enough person to be able to really grasp the concept of everything else going on.

I don't know which tradeoffs are worth the pain that they cause. I think I've proved that to myself in multiple ways- by chasing guys who I shouldn't be chasing, by running away to new places with scary people, and by pushing away people I love. Some of those things I have done more recently than others. But all of them... all of them have taught me that there are always consequences.

I don't know where to be next year. I don't know who will still care, or who even really cares now. And as much as I pretend it doesn't matter- as much as I want to believe it doesn't matter- it does. Because I don't want to be alone. I just want to belong.