i hate Censoring myself for anyone. first, it's her. then, it's you. then it's him, and him, and soon, it's everyone.

if anything i've said has shocked or offended, or even has the potential to shock or offend, then anyone who posesses these feelings is spitting in the face of truth.

and, as john keats said, "beauty is truth, truth beauty. that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

He tricked her into thinking that he was the reason they couldn’t be together. He told her so many lies, and a few truths, but by the time it was all over and done with, she couldn’t distinguish one from the other. Did he really think he was a bad person? Yes. That was a truth. Did he really love her? Lie. Did he want to take care of her? Another lie. Was he sorry? Truth.

She really thought he had changed her. Helped her to come out of her shell, to embrace life, to be free. But whenever she reflected upon him and their relationship, (if one could even use that term for whatever it was that they shared), she realized that she hadn’t changed at all. In fact, sometimes she wondered if he had done more harm to her than good. He tempted her with this newfound freedom, this passion for life, for him, and then, just as suddenly, he took it all away. But then again, he had never really given all of that to her, because he had never really given her himself, which was the only thing she ever really wanted.

She could sense that he was broken, that someone had cast his heart to the side for some reason she couldn’t fathom. To her, he was everything she never wanted and everything she always desired combined into one. She hated the way he refused to let his heart win over his mind, but she loved the way he argued with her, the way he used his logic and somehow always managed to win the battle against the hasty assumptions of her heart. The irony was in the fact that she had always held heart above head. Little good it did her with him, though. She couldn’t believe that any girl in her right mind could hurt him. She couldn’t believe that he was capable of hurting the girl in return. She argued relentlessly when he spoke of the worlds of difference between them. “You’re here, I’m here”, he would explain, holding the “you” nearly a foot above the “I”. “No, no”, she would explain, using some ridiculous mathematical theory to back up her idea. “Everyone’s life is like a sinusoidal wave, and where you’re low, I’m high, and vice versa. We balance one another out.” He always smiled at her ridiculous notions, like the time she used game theory to describe their mutual cryptic attitudes toward one another.

Maybe he pitied her. Maybe he knew in his heart that he would never forgive himself for the harm he caused to the true love of his life, back in his hometown. Maybe the consistent urgency she had when building up his character made him finally decide to give in and try to love her. And he did try, in every way imaginable. He loved her physically, and when that failed to make him love her emotionally, as well, he tried a few more times until it proved pointless. She wasn’t the love of his life. And though it pained him to admit it, he couldn’t be what she needed him to be. He couldn’t forgive himself for hurting the true love, and now she had only given him another reason not to do so. Now, he had broken her heart, too. Now, the destruction of two girls’ romantic idealisms had been complete. How could he ever move on? How could he truly believe that he could be someone’s everything, after he had failed to do so on two separate accounts? He hated her for making him hurt her. But he had warned her. He had told her since the beginning that the possibility of his breaking her heart was gargantuan.

And he hated the way she so flippantly dismissed his warning. He hated the pedestal she had placed him on; he hated the way her eyes reached the nebulous recesses of his heart and saw the delicateness and the tenderness that was there. He hated that she knew that, because that tenderness and delicateness was never meant for her. It was meant for someone else. But he could never tell her that. She wore her delicateness on her sleeve for everyone to see. It was one of the few things he loved about her, though he could never admit it. He needed to be needed. It somehow made his other needs diminish. As long as she needed him for comfort, for advice, for encouragement, he could forget how badly he needed to be home. To be away from this new environment, and back in the familiarity of his city and his friends and his routines.

She was too full of optimism. He was too self-deprecating. She was too apologetic. He was too indirect. She was too hard on herself. So was he. They were too immature for the reality of a relationship. They couldn’t have known… shouldn’t have known… that every relationship consists of a certain amount of idealism and harsh reality. He chose to focus on the harsh reality, she the idealism. There is nothing to be done about that. No amount of coercing the other could get one of them to budge closer toward the line of compromise. So, they stayed on their opposite ends of the spectrum, prolonging the inevitable ruin of their relationship.