To me, it's about closure. Closure is like forgiving but not forgetting. When you get in a fight and stop talking to someone, your silence is an action. It's not nothingness, because silence is a statement. At least it can be. There are obviously two silences. The one that happens when two people are not involved in each other's lives. They don't know, they don't care. And there isn't a thing wrong with that. There are plenty of people I come across that I don't speak to.

But I like closure on those silences that make statements about how there's some conflict standing in between me and another person. It isn't lack of anything, the way it would be with two people who don't have any interest in each other. It's something. And I like it resolved and out of the way. It doesn't mean that I have to mend things with that someone. Like Shannon. We had a huge conflict between us. We weren't talking, we weren't looking at each other but we were hating each other. And I needed that to stop. I didn't want to be friends with her but I needed to resolve the fact that we were enemies, I no longer wanted that presence in my life. That black cloud hanging over me.

So we became friends again. That is to say, we became civil and even polite and nice to each other. We weren't friendly and loving. We didn't hang out or talk on aim the way we used to. We definitely weren't lovers. But the conflict dissipated and then we quietly went our separate ways. I don't talk to her. I took her off my myspace a long time ago and neither of us write on LJ anymore. But this silence honestly says nothing. It doesn't say I hate you. It basically says, if anything, I have no interest in you. Or rather, I have a lack of interest in you, and that's why I don't bother to talk to you.

Same thing with Nicole. I needed the big black ugly cloud to be released, and then I quietly moved on. Now I don't talk to her either. Because she's a thing of my past. If you hate someone, as long as you hate them they will still be a thing of your present. The only way to truly make them a thing of the past is to let go of love and hate. I let go of love with Shannon and with Nicole, but I also had to let go of the hate too.

It's the same with Mike. We both let go of the love ages ago. And we had a lot of conflict between us and he wouldn't add me on myspace half a dozen times because of blah blah blah. I won't presume that Mike thought about me in a hateful way so that I was part of his present. I know in this past year I haven't thought about him with either love or hate. Only in memory, perhaps. But I felt that he hated me. And when he added me on myspace it felt like I was neutral again. Once upon a time I was neutral. And then I was positive. And then I seemed to be the worst person in the world to him. And I just wanted to be like all his other girlfriends. The ones he has on his myspace because they don't make his blood boil when he sees their little icon and name.

And he wouldn't give me that. More than a year after we broke up he still wouldn't give me that. And now it's nearly two and a half years later and I want to have that neutral position. I don't need to be loved, I just don't want to be hated. I want things to be healed.

I think it has felt especially significant lately because of those journal entries I read. Thinking back on a time when he was as dear to me as myself, in fact, loving him is what taught me to love myself, it opened up the door to who I am now. And although who he is at the moment means nothing to me. I still feel like that intensely intimate time that I had with him, our relationship, our feelings for each other, our significance to each other, doesn't deserve to be survived with hate.

We can move on. I'm happy to show him that he means nothing to me and that I mean nothing to him. Nothing isn't negative unless you want it to be love and then zero is lower than what you hoped and you feel sad. But if neither of us hope for more than zero, let's at least try to stay away from the negative area as well.

I still don't know what he was thinking, if there was something he was particular curious about, like seeing my photos or bulletins and he had to add me to get that, or if jeezus, I don't know. If it was an act of shaking hands, I guess. A sign of peace.

I just already feel like my reality is changed. I used to be aware that he hated me. If I talked about him with anyone I would repeatedly say, my ex who hates me now. etc. And just having him on my myspace has made me think, no longer am I conspicuous to him. No longer do I strike a negative chord with him or push his buttons, just at the thought of me. And I feel like that's my reality. I don't know how he feels, I haven't really since we broke up, if even then.

But I still feel like I no longer have to say, my ex who hates me now. I can just simply say, my ex, of the past. There's nothing between us now, we haven't said a word. There's no present. There's no friendship or how are yous. But him adding me and I guess me accepting it is like saying there's also nothing left from the past. Nothing negative that is still lingering in the present, still tainting our apathy and poisoning our neutrality.

And I honestly hope that that is what it means to him. That's closure for me. Having Mareena on my myspace, knowing that she still chats with him every once in a while. Every time it asks who her last text was she pretty much always says Mike and I can only assume it's him. They aren't involved but they still chat like that? It's always been a reminder of how there was still something unresolved between Mike and I. Although I have obviously stopped trying, perhaps that was best for both of us.

I always wanted Mike to play by my rules and I always tried to force or manipulate him to play by my rules. When we broke up, he started rebelling. Probably before then, and that's one of the essential things that came between us. Over the summer he was mine and by the fall he no longer wanted to be mine and he began resenting being mine, especially because so many other people disliked me and told him what a horrible thing it was to be mine, and since he was ready to break free, they probably just fueled each other.

Yet still after we broke up, because I was going through so much emotional shit, I had to try to control things, control my reality, control his influence over me. It was way too hard to change my insides, so I tried to change my outsides. I knew there was no way I could really make my outsides as peaceful as my insides wanted to be, because the outside was already way too chaotic. My world was shattered, my lifestyle was shattered, who I was was shattered and I felt a lot of embarrassment. It seems everything went down badly and there was so much hatred and conflict between Mike and I and everybody he dragged with him, essentially, the whole gang, who suddenly either was able to outwardly hate me like they always had, or had to go along with it because Mike was their friend.

There was a lot of turmoil and I had to try to fix it in a sneaky way that Mike never fell for. He never gave me what I wanted or needed. If I had never gone through the ordeal with Mike, I would never have left high school. Honestly, I didn't like school, never did, but the way things were was eh, pretty calm. Except for the baggage that I had with Shannon, I didn't really have a lot of chaos. I didn't have a lot of enemies or fights and things. The volcano erupted after Mike and I broke up, no longer could I be in that school with peace.

Dating Mike pretty much tore me away from the friends I'd previously had, like Jon, Maegan, Kyle. And I think I felt that they were Shannon's friends now, and that since her and I weren't friends, that she was closer to them than I was. Although after Mike and I broke up Maegan was dear to me and Jon and I were absolutely best friends, Kyle was also valuable - especially since whenever I went out it was in his car, since he was the one to drive us all.

But in any case, I was sort of stranded in an awkward phase, limbo of sorts, emotionally I didn't know who to be without Mike, I didn't know who to love, except Dave Dingman who wasn't interested in me. I didn't know who to be close to, and there was still a lot of latent turmoil. Still people I had to avoid in the halls, people I couldn't look in the eye. And Mike that I had to pretend I didn't care about. Except when we were bickering over something stupid.

When the social part of high school goes to hell, and the education is already a complete waste, what else can you do but leave? I couldn't go back to that neutrality I had before Mike. I couldn't go back to the calm. I had pretty much opened a pandora's box and I saw no peace and comfortability in high school from that point on. So I hung out in limbo for the rest of the school year and then I left.

Everything has managed to be about Mike though. While I was dating Mike, except for my furious hate for Shannon, I didn't give a damn about anybody. He was the only person I cared about. And afterwards, conflicts still resonated him. If I was fighting with Nicole, Kayla, Shannon - to me, the conflict wasn't purely and simply about them. It's not so much that we were fighting over him, or even about him, just that it mattered to me because it resonated him. Even when I had good relationships with Nicole or Shannon or Joe or Lyla... it still resonated him.

I think he was so much my whole positive reality while I was dating him, and then when we broke up, he was so much my whole negative reality - and everybody was so involved in the break up, that afterwards, those people couldn't mean much else besides Mike. Almost, I guess you could say, that they became important to me purely because they were involved with the Mike issue, and that after I left high school or near the end, if I wanted to mend the conflict, it was important to me only because it resonated Mike. Mareena has only ever been a symbol or reminder of Mike. For some of these people on myspace, I felt that they were looking at me through Mike's eyes. I didn't care what THEY thought of me, only that perhaps what they thought of me reflected what Mike thought of me in some way - negative or positive.

Even if I wanted them to be envious of me, or look up to me cause I'm smart or feel like I was beautiful or be jealous that I'd traveled the world, it was only because I wanted the resonance of Mike to be all those things. I wanted Mike to acknowledge me, not them. And perhaps that's why I knew it would never end. That they would always be something that could not be resolved. Even after our fights had ended and we made peace, I was still vain about them, I was still obsessed with what they thought of me because I was still attached to what Mike thought of me.

I say all this, but it was subconscious, it was subtext. I didn't consciously feel it or know it or plan it. I just sort of feel like having Mike on myspace isn't such a change because I've always sort of had Mike on my myspace, because I've always been dealing with the latent issue of Mike. He refused to be part of my life, but something was still active - and I was dealing with those issues through other people that had access to him. People that I eventually left and was glad to leave because I knew that they were only skin, that they could never lead me to the direct issue, which was Mike.

I think that I've made a lot of progress, moving away from Mike. I've found people who mean something to me, despite the fact that it's difficult to find something that compares to the relationship I had with Mike. I've let go of the hate, and I think the fact that I've stopped trying to control my outer circumstances (arguing with other people and making Mike do what I want him to do so that I can find peace) means that I've started making internal peace. I know I've made internal peace.