without hope you might as well be blind

I’m beginning to feel the beginning of the end of what was once a great potential. I’ve been entertaining flirtations with a guy since late December and when we’re together we’re great and when we’re not it is what it is. He doesn’t want to get serious unless he’s drunk in which case he’s proposing. And for a week now he has been without his usual swagger and communicating poorly. All my friends want me to run as far from him as I can because he doesn’t treat me as I deserve.

And I didn’t expect it to hurt so bad. This ending. This burial of a future that I didn’t even know if I wanted. If this is something I wanted, someone I knew I wanted, will I regret not having put more of myself into it? Would he have been worth the risk? I think I know in my heart of hearts that he wasn’t right for me, and that, among other reasons, is why I held back. But he was holding back too. And it is what it is. It was what it was. Past tense now? What worries me is what I think I learned about myself: am I even able to love again? Will I keep making the same mistakes over and over?