Part of being an adult means sometimes having to do things that scare you the most. and i suppose that's what the last year of my life has been. I've always had tons of friends, I've never had to eat lunch alone or go out to a party or go shopping alone. I've always had best friends so when mine went abroad last spring I felt completely alone, I sat at lunch tables for the first time by myself, I walked to class alone and took classes without my friends and I have to say that it did make me a stronger person. and when mike cheated with allison I was by myself and I had to deal on my own, and maybe I went about it all wrong keeping my tears in to study for finals and sleeping with his friends and not eating...it was certainly a path of self destruction. But I put my life back together on my own and I fixed things for myself, I picked myself back up for once in my life. and i suppose this year is without exception, with natalie becoming a whole other person, it was another person i couldn't depend on, another friend i couldn't call the way i used to. and aimee i tried hard to stay on her side, i tried hard to defend her to make our friendship work but she burned every bridge with me and of course I said things i regret and I lost brian as a friend. and that i guess was my biggest loss, brian and i told each other everything, he tols me things I know he'd never ever tell her and he was there for all my bad moments, all my weak moments, all my college tears and heartbreaks and moments i thought were the worst moments of my life. but he was also there for the best, he was the one who was there for all the nights of college i'll never forget, he was the one who stayed up until 6 am with me every night of the weekend watching bad on demand movies and i'd fall asleep in his lap and he'd cover my eyes for the scary parts. and he'd drive me home on breaks or carry me from the bus stop to his fraternity house when it was icy and he'd take my phone away from me when i had some boy problem and he'd dance with me even though he's a horrible dancer when i was feeling sad. i was there when he was really sick and bulumic and i was there when he realized he wasn't in love with his first college girlfriend and i introduced him to aimee. and he took her side, he looked at me like he didn't know me better than anyone else, he told me he was going to fix everything and aimee wasn't going to come between us and he hasn't spoken to me since, he barely even looks at me. and that will always hurts, i always used to tell jay not to worry about me because i'd found my him at school. and he felt safe about that, that i had that person i could call day or night who would always take care of me, who loved me more than he'd ever say to my face. and i haven't even seen him in months. and aimee well she only talks to me and all our roommates through e-mails and notes she leaves around the house and it just makes me so painfully sad. and aiden is back from australia this semester and living in the fraternity house and i haven't seen him since he got back and i have to admit i'm scared because he doesnt know about me dating mike again because when he left he had just found out mike and i were starting to hook up and hang out again and he got so angry because he says mike isn't good enough for me. and i don't want everything to self destruct so i have to admit i've been making myself scarce. and hardest of all, allison is having a party tomorrow night and we all got invited. and we made the decision as a house to go because we have been trying to mend those bridges to be friends with mandy, cat and kate again and allison is their best friend too. and a long time ago we were all best friends too and i have to admit they were the best times of my life, i loved saying i had 7 best friends and i loved walking into a room and having all eyes on us as we completely took over whatever party it was, running the bar and the dance floor and making every boy drool. But I guess all friendships can't last that long because 7 girls can only play nice for so long. Allison always wanted my life, every boy i kissed, dated or liked was fair game for her and i don't think she'd ever admit that she was trying to take them from me but I think it bothered her the way those guys looked at me. She only wanted mike after i started hanging out with him and then when aiden and i broke up she immediately started going after him and then i went on those few dates with dan and she went right up to him and told him that she could do twice as good as anything i could do and tried to kiss him. and everyone else shut her down except mike and i understand why he didnt, things were a mess between us and i was cheating too but what he did with her watching us become friends again well it makes me sick to my stomach. and after everything that went down between me and allison i've only seen her once in the past year and it was at the pizza shop and i practically ran away. but i'm a grown up now and i can't call my mom and tell her to call her mom and ask her not to be mean to me. and i am scared to go to that house, her house. I'm scared of seeing her face or feeling that horrible feeling in my stomach again, I'm scared of having to talk about things with her, of pretending things were okay. But i guess part of being a grown up is playing nice and if we could all be friends again that would be one less thing on my mind. And finally, my last fear well that's that in 4 months mike will be gone. He'll have graduated and I don't know if he's going to stay. I know he misses me like crazy when we're apart I know he calls me three times a day and if i don't text him throughout the day he feels like something is wrong between us. But I don't know if that's enough to keep him, he has to get a job and an apartment and have a real life. but the relationship part of him, the love part of him isn't grown up yet and I don't know if he's man enough to admit that he can't live without me, that 4 hours apart from each other it too far, to admit that if he stayed it'd be for me. I think that admitting that he sees me as a serious part of his life, even though his actions let me know what a huge part I play in his life do, might be too big of a step for him. And it's not that I don't think I could do long distance, or that if we broke up I couldn't find someone else immediately because I have an awful knack for finding ways to not be alone. I just don't think I could find someone who gets me like he does, who knows my every smile, every blink of the eye, falter in my voice, who will always understand me better than any of the other guys who send me flowers and take me on expensive dates. But I suppose this is what being an adult is like, there's no safety net out here in the real world, there's no mommy to wipe away your tears when the bully pushes you down on the playground. There's just you and some days I'm better with that than others. One day I know I'll be okay, one day I know i'll look in the mirror and not see everything that's wrong. One day I know I won't stare so hard and see all the flaws, I know one day I'll let go of the grip on the toilet and keep my food down, one day i'll be able to touch my brother maybe even give him a hug without gagging and one day I'll forgive my mom and dad for everything they didn't do for everything they lied about and hid to keep their lives from crashing down. Because I do understand why they did it, because you can't resent and hate your own child, because the more fucked up his life got and the worse he was the more they had to love him to keep themselves from hating him. and I can see it in their eyes everytime I'm home, how it tears apart their marriage, I know they see how selfish he is, I know they see how rude and horrible he is and I never got that as a kid I just saw how much they showered him with love, how everything he did was the greatest thing in the world. and there was me with a hundred friends and boyfriends and pretty good grades, who babysat and always got employee of the month, who everyone loved but my parents just didn't. I think they knew I'd be okay and that's why they put all their attention on him, I think they knew I didn't need them because I'd make my own friends and always have a boyfriend to give me the attention. So they worked more and loved me less. and I guess it takes half a decade or more to see that, to understand the decisions an adult has to make. and i know they're sorry for it now, I know they know about my eating disorders and how i almost never go home. and when I'm home and do everything they ask, all the chores, make all the sacrifices to make their lives easier and my mom shuts me out, yells at me when she's mad at him, she realizes it now and she'll take me out to breakfast but when I try to explain things to her, when i try to tell her how throwing money at him isn't going to help, how letting him live with them is tearing apart my parents marriage she tells me i just don't understand. and I talk to my older brother and we both understand how things are but he told me he knows they won't change. and honestly part of me feels sorry for my mother, because you have to love your child for better or for worse and that must be so hard. I on the other hand am under no obligation and I feel horrible every time I say this but he's getting exactly what he deserves. He hurt me and look away my childhood and now he has an illness that doctors can't cure and though its not terminal it's disabilitating and caused him to be in constant pain for an indeterminable amount of time. He still has a girlfriend and gets whatever money he needs from my parents, they pay for his housing, his shopping, his medical bills so he's not exactly suffering. But for the pain he caused everyone from his adolescence on, I think he got exactly what he deserves and my parents well I think for the first time in their lives they finally have to deal with something instead of covering it up. and i finally got what i always wanted to be 500 miles away from them, to never have to see or speak to my brother except for twice a year. it didn't solve anything the way I thought it would, it doesn't fix me inside but it's a start.