Upon first glance I see the world as I dream it, I see happy faces, I see students thirsting for knowledge and I see family groups coming together to face the unknown future. It is only after stepping back that we find our true calling. Most of my life the thing that I saw as my future was simply college, I mean sure I wanted a family, but college was really the location by which my quest ended. I didn’t ever think about what job I would get after college, I haven’t ever really had a job and I have been in love a few times yet only once so far wanted to spend the rest of my life with someone. Now, looking back at that, I feel the only reason I wanted to spend forever with her was because I knew she wouldn’t have it. I fell into the “You want what you can’t have” mindset and held myself there through all the trials and tribulations that would come. I know I wouldn’t have given up, I would have married her if she would have had it, but again, I think it would have been because of a feeling of obligation, not a feeling of honest love, the kind of love you don’t live with but the kind of love you can’t live without. I loved Ashley with all my heart, but for some reason I never really took talks of marriage seriously… maybe I was just young and dumb, but forever was just a figment of my imagination at that stage in my life. I feel as if I have grown quite a lot in the past few years both in mind and body. I again found love only this time told myself, made myself believe it was the one. She was right, we had no way of making it work, the odds weren’t in our favor. We might could have stuck it out a bit longer, prolonged the pain, but in the end I could not have spent forever with her. Dawn is a good person, possibly a great person, but she is not the right person for me. She hurt me and never saw anything my way. I know I wasn’t always right but I was all for meeting in the middle… trying to work things out… I can only believe that a marriage is built upon compromise and there was no compromising with her. We were so different, she wasn’t willing to do much of anything for us and now looking back I am unsure of why I was willing to do so much. I believe it had a lot to do with that awful feeling of rejection, the feeling of not being good enough, that kept me trying to work things out. I now have something new, only a few days in the making now, but it feels so great. I know most relationships start out great as if on a deserted Isle with nothing between the two of you but respect and passion. It is sometimes this passion that ends up driving people apart yet right now it is this passion that makes me feel as if I can’t live without her. I know it sounds stupid, after less than a week, but she has made me so incredibly happy in just 5 days that I don’t know what I was doing all along. She has been a great friend for over a year, in fact she wanted to date me just before I started dating Dawn yet I didn’t see it, didn’t understand its significance. Now I can’t deny its significance, it is there, I can feel it. I wake up thinking about her, I go to bed thinking about her, I wonder what I can do to make her happy for a day, a week or simply that fraction of a second just before I see her smile. I don’t want it to end I don’t know what it is that has me, but I don’t want it to leave. It could be wrong but we won’t know that till the end, right now it feels right and I enjoy holding her in my arms. I am done worrying about everyone’s opinion of me, no more questioning my own actions as if trying to pick each of them apart from an outsider’s perspective. I will do what feels right for me and not worry about what others think. I will be happy, I will make her happy as well. I will know at some point if what I feel is love and when I do I will tell her. She will know it long before I tell her, but I will make sure she knows. She is a very special person, a trusted friend and a loyal listener. Even while wanting me a year ago, she sat there and listened to all my relationship problems and even offered help in what I could do to make Dawn happy. She put aside her feelings for me in order to help me to be happy. She made me happy then and she is making me happy now. I can’t screw this one up. Anyhow, as I said in starting, college used to be it, the end of the line, no more plans beyond that yet I now see a future. I see a bright career with a beautiful house. At some point, I see a wife and children. I will be happy and things will be perfect. Perfect doesn’t mean without problems as I feel it is the problems that create the character within a relationship so long as the problems don’t overwhelm those bound by love. Upon first glance I see the world as I dream it to be yet looking back I see that it in itself is a dream, one that we are creating, a legacy for others to follow or deny. We write the script and can only change the next line as it has yet to be written. The past is the past and I’ll let it be but the future is on its way and I will not let myself down. In doing so, in keeping my spirits high I will lift others around me up for it is not the fear of failure but the fear of succeeding yet leaving others behind that catches me as I step. I will not let others down and I will not let them fall behind. I will carry my load and assist with others’. If we can’t make it alone we still have to make it somehow. My friends and family are here to help me and I will help them in return. Don’t let your dream fall short of its own happy ending… Aaron