And so it comes to be, a day no longer here. A year spent in your shadows, pining over your absence. Where has it led me but to further discoveries regarding myself? It is only after this prolonged adventure lacking a climax that i call 2003 that i have realized that the most important moments were small and ordinarily glanced over without a second thought. in retrospect these moments were the ones that ultimately made the year worth surviving. Without your voice in my ears and your hand resting on the small of my back, i have been forced into the realization that i don't need you in my life and this obsession with your acceptance of me has left me blinded to all the beauty that the world truly does possess. It is only now that i am able to accept the reality of the situation. i understand now that the only person i will ever have to live for is myself. Regardless of whether or not you accept me or, for that matter, regardless of whatever you think of me, i will be able to live. In the months to come, i will let go of our 4 year obligation to eachother. i will cut myself free from the tethers that have kept me tied to you while you have never considered yourself bound to me in any way. who are you if not my first love? you are just a boy and from now on i will regard you as such. This charade of dancing in circles around the question of love has gone on for too long and i am no longer willing to let myself join the masses and be a fool for you. "you may, the memory of what has past half makes me hope you will, have pain in this. a very very brief time. and you will dismiss the recollection of it gladly as an unprofitable dream from which it happened well that you awoke."