Because once you see that side of yourself, you're never the same...

[This is not written especially well; it's just me figuring things out as I type, trying to write in this space again - because I miss it, but also because I feel like I need it...]

I think that's what makes me the most angry - that there will now always be this doubt... this inner-nagging that makes me not trust myself.

And it's no one's fault but my own, but it really freaking scares me. I hate who I was back then, and I can say with confidence that I'm not that person anymore.

But, what if she comes back? What if I'm out at a bar one night and I've had a few drinks, and that person I hated just shows up again? I'd like to think I'm strong enough to fight her and go home, alone... but what if I don't?

I hate that I even think like that; it frightens me enough that I sometimes stay home at night instead of going out, just to be safe...

And then the other thing I hate? I hate that my life was changed...

I never would have wasted an evening like tonight. I would have been practicing... in Room 9, underneath the stairs...

The weird thing about that is that I actually feel as though I'm on the right track now. Finally. But, sometimes - when I hear great flutists, or any orchestra concert, or even when I'm in an airport and the background music is that horrible piped generic classical crap - I am so overwhelmingly nostalgic that I can't breathe, and I just want to be in the basement of CIM again, practicing until midnight, and then knocking on the doors again the next morning at 7:15 on the dot, because if they don't unlock the building on time you won't get your warm-ups done before theory class...

And no, I don't want to be back in school - but, that intensity I felt towards music and the flute, and just wanting, more than absolutely anything, to be a great musician... well, I want that back. Or, I still have that, actually - it's just directed differently - and maybe that's okay. Most of the time, it's okay.

But this morning, this morning I woke up feeling darkness.

And it's been a long time since I felt depressed like that, especially because there isn't any real reason for it right now. I had a great weekend, and maybe it's just coming down from that. Maybe it's because I put myself in the midst of a lot of flute players over the weekend, and I felt a pull I hadn't felt in a while. Or maybe I'm worried that he's too young, and that this is going to all end badly. Or maybe it's just raining and I prefer the sun. Or maybe I feel myself drifting away. It's too many maybes, and nothing is sure.

The pathetic thing is that I woke up not blaming myself, but blaming someone I haven't talked to in a literal year, and it was never his fault in the first place. My life changed, and at the time it was because of him, but it certainly wasn't his fault. And I'm pretty sure that's what makes me most angry of all.

The one thing of which I'm certain? That I need to figure out how to forgive both him and myself, because otherwise I'll never be able to find that young, bright flute player who believed in herself, and in love.