And The Flood. It Finally Comes.

On Saturday, haze was very blunt with me. She told me that she doesn't like it when I say things that make her feel like she's my only friend.

I don't really know if she realized how hard that hit me. How it made me feel so bad for her, for my parents -- even for my brother... For having to deal with me and my year-long pity party.

Yeah, last year, the two most important people in my life ditched me. My best friend and the love of my life. Slowly. Dramatically. Painfully.

But I have been in mourning for far too long. I started an avalanche of self-fulfilling negative and paranoid thought that no one in my life really loved me. I pushed everyone away. I lashed out. I self-sabotaged social interaction, work environments and my self esteem (which is saying something considering how low it was at that point). I killed my blog. I stopped writing about anything of consequence. I stopped sleeping and eating regularly and I watched a LOT of television.

Basically, I wasted a lot of time. A lot of opportunities. A lot of life.

Without haze... I really don't even know. She was the only one who still saw me be me... even if it was only in 3 hour rehearsal blocks. She somehow knew that the magic had not completely died inside of me. Or maybe she just hoped. Maybe she needed to believe that I would bounce back because she was going through the same thing I was.

I watched her friends and lovers do such horrible things to her... it felt like looking in a mirror. But every time, I watched her get back up and keep fighting. Fight like I didn't have the strength to. She just let me fall down, over and over and over again during these last eight months, patiently waiting to see that magic come back.

And I hope I'm not jinxing it, but I feel like we have both finally started to have that fire and light behind our words again. That we are both finally ready to be excited about something -- about ANYTHING.

She has been the best thing in my life. She has truly seen me at my worst, and somehow, she has loved me through it -- shit, she has loved me FOR it.

Somehow, without me realizing it, she has turned out to be the real love of my life.

She has proven to me that there are people out there in search of and capable of that ideal. That pure, honest, all encompassing love that still lets you be yourself. That forgives you for everything, even though there is nothing really ever to forgive because you would never intentionally wrong each other.

Laura. Thank you so much. For being the first person in my life who is actually strong enough to love me back the way I love you. It wasn't those people who treated me badly that I really learned the lessons from. It was you... the person who treated me well.

So I guess, you are just gonna hafta deal with my acting like you're the only real friend I have.


... Because you are.