I have been a diarist here for over five years. Unfortunately my original diary has lost every ounce of its anonymity. Anyone who's anyone to me knows where to find my thoughts on the web and there are simply things I'm only interested in letting strangers read.

So here we are.

Let me start by introducing myself to you via, not my name, but instead by events and occurrences between me and the people I know or knew.

I am female and twenty years old. I will soon be twenty-one. A month or so before I turned twenty, I moved in with my then boyfriend, M. M and I were in a long distance relationship for approximately five years. We met on the internet through AOL Instant Messenger. I liked M for his intelligence and his sense of humor. Very few people have ever been capable of making me laugh as hard as he was.

M's and my relationship has been over since late April.

Had I been more alert and intuitive I would never have moved in with him in the first place. Our relationship saw its share of tumult in the years before we lived together, but I was ever-afraid of being alone for the rest of my life if I left him, so I held out until I got some excellent advice. That, however, will come later.

M was my first real boyfriend. I was his first real girlfriend. We lost our virginities together. In the earlier days of our relationship, I hoped we'd end up married and with kids. Marriage, however, did not seem to be a concept he was interested in. My personal views on the subject are that it is an institution and probably has little effect on a committed relationship. I, however, still would like to wear a ring and have the entire symbol be a part of my life sometime. M thought the same of marriage, but he is somewhat more logical than I and simply saw no need for it. I am female. I like dresses. I like parties. I actually like most things that make me feel feminine, with the exception of make-up and my period.

That aside, our varying differences in opinion led to a great deal of feelings-being-hurt and tears-being-shed. In return I began to strongly dislike him. I very, very rarely wanted sex. He wanted sex a lot. As it turned out, for a while, the best way to get me to have sex with him was to hurt my feelings in such a way that I would cry, then we would have a serious conversation about the state of our relationship and then we would fuck. Usually I still did not want to fuck but by that point I would be sick and tired of crying and being upset and just gave him what he wanted so I could go to sleep. In retrospect, most days I hated him.

This went on for months, always with me ignoring my instinct, telling myself I couldn't hurt him, telling myself I couldn't be alone.

I play an online text-based RPG. The game occasionally accepts new staff members from the playerbase. A number of months ago, I applied to join the game staff and was accepted. I made friends pretty much instantaneously with one of them, and he and I talk a lot. I don't usually open up to people, but I think the reason I spilled the beans to him was because, at that point, I had no one whatsoever I felt could trust with my true thoughts. He told me I didn't have to stay in a relationship that was making me unhappy and helped me see that the entire business of being in a relationship is a two-way street. If one party is not in love, or unhappy, and can't seem to fix it, then you don't have a relationship.

So I hemmed and hawed and I made my decision. I told M I didn't want to be with him for the rest of my life and we broke up. We were still living together for a number of days after this while I was looking for another apartment. We continued to sleep in the same bed.

I also had sex with him three times after our break up.

Then, very abruptly, I found a new apartment and moved out.

Initally, our break up was mutual. He made no move to stop me. He made no argument. If he had, I know I would still be sleeping beside him each night. I was too weak at that point for what I really needed to do to be successful in the face of resistance.

Once I moved out he began calling me. He said, on more than one occasion, that he could not live without me. The calls happened three, four times a day on average. Immediately after I moved out, he went to Disney World and got drunk and called me what may have been very close to twenty times after getting drunk at the Epcot Center. I was torn between pity and revulsion.

Eventually his pathetic attitude ebbed and he tried another tactic which had worked on me before, when we were together: being an asshole.

Questions like, "did you fuck anybody yet?" came somewhat abundantly. I was called a whore, I was told he only ever liked me for the sex, I was told I'm pointless and ambitionless.

Unfortunately for him, now that I was on my own and single, this tactic was not going to work. I'd seen and realized I could very much live happily and successfully without him and so, I broke off all contact with him. The only way he knows how to contact me, now that I've changed my phone number and blocked him on AIM, is via myspace, and I ignore his messages.

I will leave his shortcomings for another entry (I have a list) but for now I think it will suffice to say that after we broke up, he got fired from his job, which he only got because I nagged him. That was my way of indirectly voicing my irritation at him allowing his mother to pay for his living expenses even though he no longer was staying directly under her wing.

Now, me. I'm generally avoiding boys, with the exception of the aforementioned text-based RPG staff member, whom we shall call MC. I like him a very great deal. So much, in fact, that if we lived closer together there's no doubt I would be dating him.

Yes, I think I may be cursed with the inability to like men who don't live within a comfortable driving distance.

I'm kind of afraid I might be falling in love with him. I've already experienced long-distance love, and let me tell you, it's quite the exasperating business.

I, however, have no attachments to this place, other than my job, and even then, I think love is a more worthy cause to relocate than a job is to stay in the same place.

So I don't suppose long distance relationships really daunt me.

Oh, and as an aside, he likes me a lot too and he's coming to visit me. I think after that I'll make what decisions might need to be made.

That's all for now. In the next entry, we will discuss the subject of my best friend, S, and her ongoing shenanigans, and why I think getting married while being both young AND stupid is a bad idea.

Getting married while simply young is okay. It's the stupid you have to eliminate before marriage is a good idea at any age.