"I hate goodbyes!"

I saw Mario last night and my convictions were confirmed; it's over.

I'm not taking it as hard as I thought I would, in fact, I think the drive going to see him was harder than the ride home. It wasn't magical. It wasn't at all like it was before, but then again, it never is. He's not at all how I remembered, in mannerisms, in looks, nothing. Perhaps it was the proverbial sands of time that corrupted yet idealized my visions and certainty that he was everything I've searched for, the boy I was going to marry.

I don't know if we were victims of circumstance, I don't know if what I once felt for him was entirely in vain, hollow behind the facade of the pressures of love. And it was last night, that I also realized, that maybe, just maybe, the feelings were completely one-sided. He had, and still has, his girlfriend to love. I loved him. There was no room for me there and there may never be and that's fine. There are others.

I am searching for the validity in those feelings I drowned in for so long. Was what I felt real? Was there ever anything even there? What did he see in me, if anything? And in turn, what did I see in him?

I have let go. He's no longer the definition to my lonliness. He is no longer the center of my universe. I never needed him. I just simply wanted him.

Funny this entire ordeal happened last night, on the one-year anniversary of my singledom. Just as one year ago, I let someone I love go and I did it again last night, though this time with a smile, not with bitterness or pain. And when I crawled into my bed after all was said and done, I slept. It felt like the first time in years.