this has been tugging at me for quite some time. the thought to write this down has crossed my mind countless times before, but no more than just that.

i remember telling someone today that writing things down helps me calm down from an extreme emotion. she has depression. i have no mental or psychological condition, other than that i am almost an adult who still has ages and strides to go before hitting that point emotionally.

all i ever want, wanted, is and was--attention. pretty much. when i was a younger teenager and was not considered by the outside and material world as 'pretty' 'beautiful' or even just 'cute', i wanted so much just to have some guy show a stronger affection for me than just friendship. besides the fact that i had never had a boyfriend, even at the tender age of thirteen, i don't know what made me want it. i cannot blame this entirely on the world and its outside influences, this is mostly my own emotional doing. i always seemed to have a huge infatuation for a certain boy, and i almost always knew he would never return the ardor; i seemed naive and yet content in that fact, it never stopped me from hoping. how i wish i could have that kind of hope about anything these days; adulthood seems to get grayer, and you're seemed to meant to have deal with things depressingly all the time, because that's how the world works.

then one day, after liking a guy for a while, boom! out of the blue, he asked me out. i said yes. i still looked like an eight-year-old girl, however; i couldn't possibly see what he saw in me. he asked me out after school that day. the next day all i ever heard from people was "YOU'RE going out with HIM??" i couldn't really believe it. i couldn't take it. the day after, we talked. we agreed to break up. i was relieved when i found out he was thinking along the same lines.

i had thought people had asked me those questions all the time because of who i was compared to him...maybe it was the other way around...but i'll never know. and frankly, i won't lose sleep over this.

i haven't had a boyfriend since. i can't even call him a boyfriend really; he's just "an ex". maybe i wasn't used to it, but thirteen year olds shouldn't be used to pressure like that. not me, anyway.

i am turning eighteen in three weeks. i could not be more excited to get out of this adolescent state of mind. i've spent so much of my high school years trying to enjoy myself, because i was afraid of missing this when i got older. i will anyway, i'm not going to waste my time anymore.

the adult world seems to be slowly closing in on me. a good deal of my friends are younger than me and still in high school. i love them all dearly, but i seem to be developing a more mature way of thinking than before. i am eager to test it against others while in college.

i was just thinking of this; that the day he asked me out, i came home and blurted out the 'good news' to my mom, and the second question she asked me, after his name, was what he wanted to be when he grew up. i was mortified that i had not asked him, and made something up. thirteen? you have dreams. high school, you have goals. now, i have PLANS.

it seems that each year, there has been at least one boy that stands out in my mind. like, he was my 'crush of the year' or something juvenile like that. i've always, for pity and self-pity, tragically worn the label out of all my friends and peers as 'the unrequited lover'. i used to call that poetic. i look back on that person and i do have pity for her. this past year, more than one guy stands out in my memory. the most recent of infatuations i have almost entirely forgotten, thank goodness. looking back at all of these emotions i felt for each one of them, i can dig deeper into each of them and they all lead to the center of the earth, the rock i hit the shovel on--attention. a great desire to be noticed, maybe loved, but more noticed as the person i am. and in order to get noticed for the person i really was, i had to get their outward attention focused first, otherwise known as my appearance. right? no.

every time i see one of them, i think that i immediately will start liking them again if i talk to them. but it dies out as soon as the next sun rises.

i realize this now, on the edge between my old life and the new. the song is 'fix you', by coldplay. i used to think i related to the part about your love for someone going to waste. now it's just a beautiful song about healing in general. i think it's talking about God.

a long time ago i wrote an email to someone i greatly admired about all this, and they wrote back simply that i should not have to seek attention from boys. it was a short reply. it was all i needed to hear.

i am going to concentrate on my life from now on, not would it could be like with a man in my life. seriously, at this point, i don't know if i have room. i need to become more serious about my relationship with God and Jesus Christ, because i don't think that i have been taking the lot of it seriously enough. i need to concentrate on moving forward, not too fast, but at this point, it's all i need to be sustained.

it's all i need.

-d