Life's hard lessons
Giving up hope is one of the hardest things in the world. There comes a point where the costs to one's self to hold on to a hope are too great. I do believe that I have reached that point with Nina tonight. For the last week or two we have hovered in the area between friends and dating. It gradually became clear to me that she is playing some game that I still don't fully understand. Last night I brought up the idea that maybe we shuould just be friends and we had a talk about it. She made her position clear to me in that she did want to be more than friends, but at times (most times) she would prefer that we act as though we were just friends. Basically what it came down to is that we were to be "just friends" until she decided otherwise, and then afterwards go back to "just friends" until the next time. That, at the time, seemed acceptable to me as I knew that she really did care about me and I was wary of hurting her by not agreeing. Today I saw her for almost 9 hours, in those 9 hours she paid so little attention to me that I doubt she'd have realized if I caught fire. I finally realized that no matter how much I really do care for her, and no matter my feelings, there would be no forseeable change in our situation. I, understandably was (am still) sad. After talking with a few people about this I came to the conclusion that it was time to look out for my feelings, and not worry so much about her. They went on to tell me that perhaps acting simply as friends would make her like me more, and I do agree that is a possibility. After giving it more thought I believe that is wrong. The point of being friends is not to make her like me more, it is to preserve friendship that I believe is very special, it would be a shame to ruin it over some highschool game. The way I feel about her is not a game, there is not meant to be a winner and a loser. Using the prospect of "only" a friendship to leverage some affection or attention out of her would be wrong, I will not do that. So that is where I am left; I know a girl that I have a lot of feelings for, but at this time I would hate to lose a great friendship over those feelings. It is hard to walk away from the hope that there could be something even greater, but only time will tell what was the right course of action.