The fork in the road, with honesty.

I just need to write these thoughts down somewhere before they burst. I have been thinking the whole of last night. About a lot of things. Where I want to go from here, what I want to do, and Lee. I feel that I have reached this place in my life where I have to make good decisions because everything I decide will have significance for what follows after. I didn't use to feel this way. I don't know if it's age or it's just the fact that I have come to this fork in the road where I must choose. I want to do things for myself, things that matter in the long run.

So I did not get accepted into the schools I want and I doubt that I will attend State even if they did accept me because that is the easiest simplest solution and I am such a lazy person. I will stay in my comfort zone for as long as I can. I will avoid the tough and ugly things for as long as I can. I will delay, I will wait, I will pretend that everything is okay. Then once in a while, I will have these clear moments of panic. What the hell am I doing--then I wouldn't have an answer. It depresses me, mostly because I feel that I haven't been honest with myself.

Lee thinks it's a biological thing. He tells me: Notice how it happens monthly--perhaps, that has something to do with it too, but these concerns feel real--he thinks I am just complaining, that most of the time I am fine, so these are just moments, kinks in a machine that we can quite safely ignore. But I go along with things most of the time, these worries, these feelings just bubbles beneath.

To be perfectly honest, I have always felt that our relationship has been based on need--his need of me and my willingness to be needed. Sometimes, that can feel like an anchor--the need to be needed--maybe a lot of parents hang on to that because it confirms someone's existence. I believe that I do love and care for Lee, I just don't believe that this relationship is one that will help me grow and find myself in true and deep ways.

And I have problems verbalizing that and making this feeling understood. I talk to him on the phone and he is quick to reassure me that everything is okay. He wants me to consider moving in with him, but I think the best thing for me to do is to leave and go somewhere else.

I have been counting on getting accepted into one of the schools so I can finally go away and figure it out, because I didn't want to do the hard thing. I am afraid of hurting feelings--his and my own. He needs to grow up and so do I. I feel that we hang on to each other mostly because we are afraid of so many things.

And I am still afraid. I don't think it's even a matter of conquering fear or any of that. I think it's really an issue of me being honest and true to myself instead of someone else. I foresee so many problems if I really do choose to move in with him, but mostly I think that I am not being true to myself. Call it selfishness, but that is the last person I will betray.

I need to move away, or at least do something else for a while. The problem is how to make this need and this feeling understood. How do I tell him that what I need is this search. I wish I had someone who would be my companion along the way, (don't we all) but then sometimes, we come to this fork in the road and one person says this way the other says that--it is the place where no compromise is good, only solid decisions--either one person capitulates or they go on their own way.