He e-mailed me this morning, and then we talked on the phone. Misunderstandings, fears, insecurities, doubts . . . it�s a tangled mess. Underneath it all, I was unwilling to write him off because I still think he�s a very decent person and I really do care for him. It turned out, when we finally spoke, that he feels the same way about me. He needs to grow up a lot, and he needs to decide how he wants to live his life. I need to get over some of my insecurities, and I need to take better care of myself in a number of ways. We decided that we will start at the beginning�not at the place where we actually started, but the place where we should have started. We�ll start by seeing each other occasionally, and seeing other people if we feel like it. We won�t talk on the phone every day, and we won�t sleep together. We�ll see, at some point, if it feels right to go further.

In my gut this feels okay. I guess this is partly because I hate for things to end in anger, partly because I really don�t want to never see him again but I�m not ready to see him all the time yet, partly because I still want to be dating and having fun, partly because I�m sure I�m ready for a full-blown serious relationship anyway, and partly because I know perfectly well that this is what we should have done in the first place.

It was a lot of fun to be head-over-heels those first few weeks, but I don�t think we were very smart or realistic about it. We skipped over some basic steps, thinking we were beyond that because we were friends, and that was a mistake. Even if it doesn�t work out, at least we won�t have to regret not trying to fix our mistakes.

As my first step in doing a better job of protecting myself, I�m going to leave my diary locked for now. He doesn�t need to know everything, and he neglected to compliment my writing, so hmph! And as my first step in taking better care of myself, I went to the drugstore and stocked up on therapeutic bath products. (All on clearance, of course.) It�s going to be a good weekend.

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