In transferring my diary to this account and in moments of boredom and self-loathing, I have recently had several occasions to revisit an old version of myself, well-documented in the archives. What has been clear to me for a long time is that I have become a completely different person in the two years I've kept an online diary; what has suddenly struck me tonight is that there was a definite moment, a clear line of demarcation, when I consciously decided to embark upon an entirely new path. And for the first time in my life, I followed through.

When I began this diary, I was smug and selfish and certain. I had no guiding principles or sense of purpose to speak of, just that I was right, and I was cool. And yet, I didn't really like myself. The justifications I found for my treatment of Benjamin were obscene and baseless:

And he can just tell himself that I became a bitch and it wasn't worth it to put up with me anymore. He can ignore whatever might have meant something in those notes, and he can ignore the fact that nothing had been going wrong between us in the months that we were friends again until the last week when I started telling him how I actually felt about things, god forbid. He can say he doesn't need my shit anymore, because I'm saying the same thing. If he defines a friend as someone who will visit a website more than once and cheer you up on command and, oh yeah, never change her mind on anything, well we just have a fundemental difference on what makes a good friend. I'm tired of having to prove myself to win this or that part of him. I'm tired of nothing is good enough. It has never been a chore with any other friend I've ever had, and it would be okay if it actually brought us to some transcendental higher plane of friendship, but, ah, it hasn't. I don't care if this is the end. I'm through with this shit.

I cannot begin to tell you how wrong and short-sighted I was. At the time, perhaps a clean break was for the best. But only because I was too dependent upon him. I was unable to have a healthy relationship. I was flightly, uncommitted, and a pretty horrible friend. I was a very, very selfish person.

And I had no priorities, no real goals. I was not seeking academic enlightenment: I was a political science major because of The West Wing! There was nothing, absolutely nothing, to me. Just a couple one-liners probably plagiarized from a film and nothing of substance. I had no idea why I believed anything I believed. Absolutely nothing there.

I'm 19 and I've never been kissed. There's just simply something wrong with that. I don't care if there are other 19-year-old girls out there who have never been kissed. There is something wrong with them too.

That was my system of assigning value to things.

And that break with Benjamin was the height of selfishness, a very purposeful decision to choose in favor of myself above all other things. I convinced myself it didn't matter how my actions might hurt him. I'd fuck him over this one last time, and promise never to do it again. I told myself that would be enough.

And while I hate myself for it now, it seemed to be the only course at the time; and though I don't believe it justifies all my destructiveness, I have changed. I haven't done it again. I would never do it again. I am not that person any more.

What is so interesting to me is that in the course of my [then-]final ungraceful, disgraceful email to Benjamin, I made this fundamental change. Literally from one sentence to the next, I went from my usual selfish rationalizations to a clear sense of what had to be done about it:

So I'm willing to walk away from you, arguably the person who at times has made me happier than any other and understood me better than any other to see that I will never feel how you make me feel anymore.

So now I know how not to conduct myself in a relationship. I throw myself into the real world now, a little late at 19, to see what else I can learn and who else I can love. It's about time.

There: I understood. What I did was wrong. But what I did with it has made all the difference in the world for me. The realization, I now see, was almost instant; the process of fulfilling that realization, of course, was a much lengthier undertaking.

Then, in a matter of days, came my first DHS experience, in a class I knew from the start would change my life. It did: every one of my assumptions was challenged, and every day I was intellectually stimulated -- both perhaps for the first time in my life. I immediately knew:

I think this is the class and the professor that can finally make me come alive.

And it truly was. I emerged from the experience more confused and unsure than I had ever been. But in a wholly constructive, evolving way. That class set me on my course. After opening my mind to so many ideas, there was no turning back.

And then I learned what real friendship was. And then I was no longer never-been-kissed, and realized having a boyfriend did not have a thing to do with my worth as a person. And then I discovered feminism, and with it a clearer sense of what actually does define my worth as a person. You can chart the progress: it has been a constant flow of ideas through my life, and with each I get a little further down the path... To what end, it doesn't matter: I am going somewhere.

The reality is, I have been a thinking person for less than two years. For an even shorter time, I have known what it means to be a true friend, to love, to relate. But even in this short span of time I feel that I could finally trace my way back to the beginning: I could be a good friend to Benjamin. He could have a large place in my life without consuming it entirely. I could love him the way I always meant to.

But we've drifted in and out of contact again. I won't even try to come up with an explanation why: I don't know. I may have angered him. I may have scared him. My ability to function with or without him may have convinced him I care less than I really do. Perhaps all my traveling, which seems to have led me to a place where I could be closer to him, has in reality led me further away. We are not the same people anymore. As incompatible as we always were, perhaps we will continue to drift further apart.

But he continues to be -- there really is no other word -- a presence in my life. He is always in the back of my mind. And I believe it's the same for him. If we don't speak again for five years, we will still have this connection; we do what we have to do, but there really is no breaking it.

It's just sad for me to know that I could be a good friend to him, and yet he doesn't want it, or he's afraid of it, or he doesn't believe it. And it's terrifying for me to know that something horrible could happen to him, and I might never know. I wonder if this is the way it will always be. Connection without contact.

Of course I know it is this way because I have made it this way. I chose myself over him. I made that decision. And seeing how far I've come from the frightened, selfish girl I was two years ago, I would do it again. It's just sort of hilarious and sad when you think about it: without leaving, I never could have grown so much; without having grown so much, I could never be good to him; having once left, I will never deserve the chance to be good to him.

But that was the choice. Those were the consequences. And this is my chance.

I won't tell you a thing, you won't see me cry
I'll know what to do, I will not lie
I'll take the chance, I may be fine
But I may never be the same
Jonatha Brooke