Well, I have come to realize that, no matter how long I'm alive, I will never, ever understand women.  Just can't do it.  You are amazing creatures, but impossible to figure out.

What brought this on, you may ask?  Lani and I are back together and it's better than it ever was.  My brooding and obsessing is gone, and the love I now feel for her is quite unlike anything I've ever been through.  I just know she's gonna be there.  It's not like it's a safe bet or the odds are in my favor, more like that's just how it's supposed to be.  She said that she had broken up with me because she didn't want to hurt me anymore.  If it had been any other reason, I wouldn't have gotten back into this.  But that showed me that she did in fact care for me, enough to give me up so that I wouldn't be hurt anymore.  I told her that it was the best and stupidest thing she's ever done.  But, the benefits of it are that we've both grown up, we've both been through this difficulty, and we both understand each other more than we ever had.  The time we've been spending together has been wonderful.  She sleeps over at my place and, since I always wake up before she does, I just lay there and stare at her.  She's so absolutely beautiful.  And we get along much better now, as well.  We joke around, talk a lot more and I have such enjoyment seeing her.  Yet I'm not forced to or driven to.  She leaves here on the 20th of February.  After that, I'm going to play this by ear.  I don't want to hold her to a commitment that she's unwilling to make, and I don't want her to commit unless she feels she can stick with it.  Time and distance are alot to overcome, and there's going to be a lot of both before I will allow myself to marry her.  I can only offer her my heart now, nothing else, no security or stability. 

But, I'm one happy son of a bitch right now.  Truth be told, I'm glad this all happened the way it did. 

Today is better.  I haven't brooded over Leilani too much, not as much as in the recent past.  We had a mortar hit pretty close last night, close enough for everyone to grab their gear and haul ass to the bunker.  Afterward, I had the urge to go see how Lani was, but it wasn't a "friendly" urge so I wrestled with it and won.  I've decided that any feeling towards her that isn't friendly in nature I'm going to just let pass.  She asked me out to lunch this morning, but I didn't get the message in time, thankfully.  I don't think I'm ready to see her.

Now that the fog of love is lifting, I'm beginning to feel the hurt that I should have.  I couldn't feel this because that would have darkened my feelings and thoughts towards her, something that I will have to get over.  Love's naivete, at least for me, has cost me alot in the past and present.  I resent her for cheating on me.  I cannot knowingly hurt someone I love and the thought of doing it is so alien to me that there is no excuse or rational explanation that I can grasp.  I resent her for leading me on.  She had to have known that I wasn't acting like a friend. 

I also realized that I'm in love with Lani's warm part.  Most times she's very cold to people.  When she began showing that side to me, it really hurt.  But when she opened up to me, when she'd be the "happy Lani" it was magic and that's what kept me coming back.  So, now I'm trying to see how life is post Lani.  So far it's pretty good.  I've got my book to help my mind develop, my journal for my thoughts and feelings and of course the head shrinker, and the gym for my body.  I'm getting better, line by line and bench press by bench press.

A Tale of Two Leos

I talked to Leilani last night and finally got the answers to the questions that have been tearing me apart mentally and emotionally.  I asked her, at the end, if there was any way that we could get back together.  She said "possibly" but that we need time to get over our separate problems.  If she had said yes, let's do it, then I would have given in.  My love for her is still there and I've spent most of the day just trying to not think about her.  I saw her, but ignored her.  If we are going to be friends then I need time to heal and time to let my love for her fade into something platonic.  And I still hurt and have been feeling some resentment towards her that I've been hiding from myself.  She's cold and I have made this relationship centered around her, and she let me.  Bad news any way you look at it. 

The two Leos part is this:  I've now met two beautiful, wonderful women, both Leos, that I've loved and dated and broken up with and become friends with in the same year.  Lindsay touches me in ways that Leilani doesn't and she understands me more than any woman ever has because we're so alike.  Leilani is beautiful, talented, and puts me on such a high pedestal that it was a very hard, long fall when she cheated on me.  But, right now in my life I have no place for someone.  I have to get through college and get a career.  Somewhere in there I need to do a lot of growing up as well.

I feel now that, if you choose to be with someone "forever" that you better damn well have lived your life enough to where you're ready to settle down.  Marriage is a kind of ending to some personal growth.  You give up freedoms.  And, if you do it too young, you sell yourself short.  Look at it like this:  I could marry someone now, but I have no college, no career, and am not sure about what I want to do with my life.  Five years down the road when I have a degree, have a career, how much better of a woman can I attract.  As I've gotten older I've grown up and have been able to consistently raise the bar for what kinds of women I can attract.  Leilani is the most beutiful and Lindsay has the best personality, but I still feel that Ms. Right is out there and can blow both of them out of the water.

I talked to the Division Psych yesterday.  I'm not crazy and they don't think I need meds.  They say that I've done an amazing job for the past eight years dealing with it on my own, but they think and I honestly hope that they can help me do better.  All in all I'm doing this for me because I want to let my anger and my pain go.  Pain keeps you safe by reminding you of how much people can hurt you, but it makes you afraid and in constant self-inflicted agony.  Now I have to figure out what life is like without Leilani.  I need to figure out what I really want to do for MY future.  And, this may sound cold to some of you young ones, but, until I am physically intimate with someone new, I'll still be tied to Leilani, to her physical familiarity.  We had such passionate sex and she's so attractive that it's difficult to get over seeing her constantly.  So, I need to have sex with someone new in order to break that final bond, breach that final gap.