Ahhhh... so I've just started to rebuild my faith in human nature. (As dennis would put it, "have more faith Hannah") Sooooo... far so good, I can start to love willingly, opening up delicately despite my otherwise leathery exterior. But as much as I am beginning to allow myself to be entralled in this recollected experience (last i remember being somewhere at 13 years of age... 5 years, 5 teen-age years, of being unabled to let another person close... except for dennis) I start to doubt. Not the goodness and beauty of others, not that, which is easily beckoning me to submit to self-release, but myself.

I start to worry that if I allow myself to get involved in a whole new web of unrestrainted friendships, that I might be my self-traitor, poisoning whatever is joyfully granted to me, not by any right but by grace (like every relationship on earth is but an image of our relationship with God, the fact that we are loved despite being so unlovely is a gesture of grace).

Like you Dennis, I am a creature of necessity, i.e. i make and keep relationships out of necessity. No sentimentality, no emo (but I am a girl afterall so i guess Hannah no. 4 may emerge once in a while, maybe while looking at photos, but on the whole, i would not attempt to revive whatever has passed).

My philosophy? They come and go, both for a reason, when the time comes, let them go their way, they have fulfilled their purpose in your life, and you in theirs.

Fine by me for the past 5 years. But suddenly, with the re-introduction of "friends" along with all it's perks: laughter, ease, gossip, acceptance, love, dreams, concern, sharing... (you know me I could continue) I'm stumped. So I live and love, but I doubt... Do i love because I love? Or am i the perfect specimen advocating the Solipsistic theories... That everything I do, be it to befriend, to hold, to encourage, to love, springs not from an inner honest beauty, but from a self-centered, self-seeking, selfish machiavellian motivation, that it's all about me, my advancement, my life.

Or am I simply being human?

So how do I say I love... when I feel I do, but fear that I do not.