I have been told that I hold on to the wrong people and cut the right people loose from my life, that I get too attached to the wrong people and don't give the right people a chance. Considering how long I've gone without getting attached to anyone, even when I'm getting it backwards I consider it a sort of improvement. With bulimia, if you eat anything, even if it's cheese puffs at first, and you don't purge them but let them digest, you're getting somewhere. You'll get to the right foods soon enough.

I won't bullshit you; the people that I have issues with, the inability to hold on to, are the men in my life. I have been making a lot more progress keeping the female friends I already have in close contact as well as making new ones and keeping up with them. Women need that, they need other women, their friends, to keep up with them, almost on a daily if not weekly basis. I have, to date, two male friends who are in my area that I have been able to say I am very happy to have and with whom I have consistent contact. One is Reed, a guy from my church, who after returning from a semester in France is the only other single person in our church around my age. He has, as most people do, a more hectic and full schedule of life than I do, so I am lucky if I see him once a week outside of church. But I am proud of the fact that I can now stop him before he leaves church and ask him if he wants to go grab a bite to eat or catch a movie with me. I can call his cell phone and not feel awkward about it.

The other friend is Mike, but we have only gotten to this point in our friendship by means of a very rough road that I have put him through. We met online and after realizing we lived in the same city, met in person and enjoyed each other's company quite a bit. Mike has always been good at drumming up fun things to do and like me, he hadn't had anyone fun to do them with in a long time. Before long, I had found myself in the role of his girlfriend without even really being aware of it at first. I didn't want that, but it seemed that it was where I found myself. We went back and forth with it for several months and I know I pissed him off and angered him because I refused to admit that we were anything but friends. Then I started seeing someone long distance who I had also met originally online and had cut off all contact with Mike because I simply couldn't handle two vague people in my life. Now that he is allowing me a second chance at being his friend for real this time, I have been nothing but grateful, for I never believed him when he said from the beginning that friendship was all he initially wanted from me. I didn't realize that guys like him existed, for whom friendship was even more important than a girlfriend.

The following is for the other guys not yet mentioned:

From the first time I met you, I have been hooked on you. I have wanted you around all the time from that first moment I saw you and talked with you. There was an energy there that I craved, a light and heat that lingered inside of me like a flash of heat lightning. I could talk to you for hours. You had me when you walked through that door and you didn't even know it. So, from the start, I was doomed to be let down.

Every time you couldn't make it or weren't around, each time I looked forward to seeing you and you couldn't be there, I realized how much you meant to me and it scared me, scared me senseless. I am so proud and want so badly to not be so vulnerable to you, since you can only be my friend. And it often seemed like it was no big deal to you that you let me down, but you may not have really known what you had done.

I am torn. How do I play the role of a friend now, what would a friend do? Would a friend be so hurt when you don't call at least to say you can't make it, would a friend get so mad when you forget that you had plans? Is there something about me that is not being honest with itself, not admitting that even if I can't have you, I want you in ways you can't be for me? Probably so. That's been an ongoing problem for me. If I don't forgive you this time, is that saying that I want to be more than your friend, that I am hiding my true intentions? I mean, you haven't really done anything wrong, but I feel that you have, you have let me down. You have done far less than I anticipated, you don't think of me (or if you do, I'll never know it by your actions) or miss me like I miss you.

One day I'm going to show up nonchalantly at your world and find out for myself what you think of me. I will storm down the walls of your world that shut me out only letting me in at small intervals unfairly. You will then be forced to kick me out, so that I know where I stood, and where I now stand. I will give you every opportunity to fail me, to be all the things I think you are, in the vain hope that you will for once, prove me wrong. I am worth it, I believe, I am worth all this annoying attention. At some point, I will get my answers so I can finally cut you loose from my heart. Or maybe, for the first time, let you in. But will you even be interested once you've found out what I've done, what I have put you through?