all your dreams are over now

Hi.  I'm in Chico, California.  I'm sitting at Brian's daughter Angela's computer while they all make Thai coconut soup downstairs.  This has been a really strange visit.  I'm just going to preemptively say -- please do not tell me not to get back together with Brian.  It is not even a possibility in my mind.  Even if it were, it would be so far in the future that there will be plenty of time for you to warn me not to do it -- I'm in school in Oregon and he is here with his job, for at least another year. Also, there are a lot of other things.  Like, I stopped having feelings for him in December 2006 when I left him, and those feelings haven't come back.  And I really can't trust him since I already gave him a second chance years ago.

That said, I can't believe how determined he is.  I had no idea he even felt this way anymore.  We talk on the phone a lot, but just as friends.  But since I've been here he won't stop talking about how much he wants me back... begging me.  Not to be with him right this second, but someday to reconsider.  Pleading with me to keep an open mind.  I haven't really said definitively "No" because what he's asking is so indistinct and so far in the future.  Plus I feel sorry for him.  I know what it's like to want to be with someone that bad, for years and years.  He keeps telling me that I'm the only person he's ever cared for or ever will care for and that no one else will ever compare to me.  And how proud he felt when we were together, to tell people that I was his girl, and how much he wants to help me and support me in whatever I want to do with my life.  It's overwhelming.

The problem is that whenever he says anything nice about me or tells me how much he loves me, all I can think about is how he treated me when we were actually together.  So the more he talks about it, the more upset I get.  Then eventually I can't hold it in and I blurt out all these things he said and did to me in the past, in rapid fire.  He finally decided he was "moving too fast" and told me he would stop talking about it, and that we should just have fun while I'm here.  But he still won't stop hugging me, trying to hold my hand, trying to kiss me -- which I will not do -- and even when he tries to hug me, it just reminds me of all the times when he was angry and wouldn't speak to me or touch me for days... I don't know. 

Even if I believed 100% that he was a new person -- which it kind of seems like he is, way more than when we got back together that other time -- I don't think I could ever be in love with him again.  All that died when we were in Thailand and he told me I was worthless and he didn't want me dragging him down anymore, and that I should just leave.  I could never open my heart again after that.  And I don't really want to.  And that was so long ago.  Two and a half years.

So anyway, you don't need to tell me not to be with him.  I'm not.  I'm just telling you what's happening.  It's very surreal.  It's even more surreal now that both his daughters live in this town.  I've met them before but I don't really know what they think of me or what they think of me popping back in to his life.  His older daughter, Angela, was born when he was 17.  His younger daughter, Leiha, is supposedly getting married to her boyfriend.  She's only 19.  She was picking out wedding dresses today.  Her boyfriend is 28 (my age) and has a *neck tattoo* of a *flaming skull*!!!!  

Anyway.  I have so much more to write about, from going to San Francisco, but I don't know if I have time right now.  

Actually I think I want to drink more wine and watch a movie with them.  I'll write more later or when I get home tomorrow.

Love, Becky