when the rain starts to fall

on a more uplifting note - this one's for you, my love.

I'll be there, my darling, through thick and through thin

When your mind's in a mess and your head's in a spin

When your plane's been delayed, and you've missed the last train.

When life is just threatening to drive you insane

When your thrilling whodunit has lost its last page

When somebody tells you, you're looking your age

When your coffee's too cool, and your wine is too warm

When the forecast said, “Fine,” but you're out in a storm

When your quick break hotel, turns into a slum

And your holiday photos show only your thumb

When you park for five minutes in a resident's bay


And return to discover you've been towed away

When the jeans that you bought in hope or in haste

Just stick on your hips and don't reach round your waist

When the food you most like brings you out in red rashes

When as soon as you boot up the bloody thing crashes

So my darling, my sweetheart, my dear...

When you break a rule, when you act the fool

When you've got the flu, when you're in a stew

When you're last in the queue, don't feel blue

'cause I'm telling you, I'll be there.

-- Louise Cuddon, I'll Be There For You

we spent time in swings empty

day five - your ex-boyfriend/girlfriend.

i was listening to third eye blind the other day and when the lead singer wailed out how's it going to be when you don't know me anymore? i couldn't help but think of you.

there are a million emotions i could name that, in some way in the past, related to you. guilt. naivete. hurt. anger. inadequacy. frustration. loneliness. and maybe, in fleeting moments - happiness, something close to love.

but what i never felt with you was calm. safety. the feeling that i could wrap myself up in you as if you were a sweater, and close my eyes and sleep forever. our relationship was fueled by angst, by uncertainty, by the things left unspoken that haunted me for those years we were together.

i still don't quite know what to make of you. i don't think i will ever understand you, the way you could break a chair over a lost football game but couldn't shed one tear the day before i went across the ocean for four months. somewhere deep inside there's a real you, a real person with real feelings - but it's covered up with your brash attitude and braying laugh and a thick armor that deflects any difficult question or subject. i don't know what, or who, made you that way, but i know that i couldn't be happy with someone who locks real emotion deep inside themselves, never to see the light of day.

i guess i found out what it's like to not know you anymore - but i don't think i ever really knew you, not at all.

i'm sorry i hurt you. this much is true. no matter how much i needed to get out of our relationship, you still didn't deserve for me to neglect you and distance myself and yes, kiss another boy, all the while assuring you that it would be okay. no one deserves that, not even you. but the truth is, i didn't know anything other than you, and i was afraid of the void you'd leave if i let you go. i was a coward, but i was also young. i look back at myself then and it's so clear how lost and alone i was back then - i just didn't fully know it.

even that day i said goodbye you i didn't truly think i was going to do it. deep down, though, we both knew it was happening. it was too late for us: we could never have fixed it. i don't think we were meant to fix it. and i knew that i had to let you go not only because you deserved better, but also because i deserved better.

i have a new life now and i am happy in ways i've previously never known how to be. the only thing i regret is that the way we went out completely killed any chance at friendship, because i think in another world we really could have been friends. now all i can do is hope that you're happy too.

in the end, our story is over. i hope that when you think of me, you don't hate me. in fact, i hope you don't think of me at all. i hope you live out a full live. i hope that whatever it is that makes you lock your emotions away will disappear.

(then i whisper these wishes to the wind, and let them go.)