Dear Diary,

I used to be the girl that dated all the lost puppy dogs. The boyfriends whose mothers didn't love them, the guys who came from superdysfunctional homes. I was convinced that all those boys needed was someone to love them, and everything would be okay. That my love was magical, and could lift them out of their dispair, change their lives, turn them into real functioning people.

I defended them to the end, I had arguments and counterpoints as to why they DID deserve to be loved. I was right, of course, everyone does deserve to be loved. But the part I didn't get was that I didn't always have to be the one to fix everything. That I deserved some respect too. That people deserved love, but if they didn't make some effort to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and change their lives, then nothing would shift.

I thought I had changed and left that behind, but I realize M was just the same broken story. There was a fabulous unbroken part of him that I enjoyed immensely, and then there was this other part that he just refused to attend to... he wanted it all to go away.

I don't want to do that anymore. I don't ever want these tired old ghosts to follow me around again. Right at this moment, I hardly ever think of having a boyfriend or working on getting one. I think because I know that someone is coming. But rather than feeling excited, I am actually more scared than anything else. Because I think this man will demand much more of me. I will have to grow up, and I will have to stop deluding myself about my own worth, and I will have to stop all my old patterns because they will not work. Holy fuck. Who will I be without all my old dysfunctions?

Only time will tell... but this is what Shelby is instrumental in helping me to do. Being with him will change me, and I will never be the same. I am different now than I was two years, a year ago, but I am about to be permanently altered in a profound way.

And so it goes.

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