"Awwwww. I don't approve. Because I won't let you crumble. And if you do, I'll put everything back together."

Eric was the boy who changed everything. Even if it was unintentional.

When Eric looked at me, he saw a friend. Looking at me, on the outside, he thought I was awake. But what he didn't know is that I had been asleep for the longest time, and he was the only one to truly wake me up. The one to shake me like a Tide-To-Go and say "Girl, you gotta live!"

Sitting on my back porch one day, reading, I thought about this. I was swinging on the chair on my deck when the lightest breeze passed over me. It wasn't forceful or angry wind. It was the kind of breeze that has better things to do, so it just passes you by, but that one breeze really caught me by surprise. It hardly moved my hair, just lightly pressed on my cheeks and floated on. It might not have touched me so much as my thoughts. I just sat there, gliding back and forth, thinking: This is how Eric makes me feel.

Sometimes it's hard to tell people what's on your mind, what's always on your mind. It's hard to tell people the facts, the past, the rest. Sometimes you've built up that wall so thick, you just can't stand to let anybody past it. You are cut off, opaque, hardly able to give up anything inside you.

I did not feel that way with Eric. I felt the opposite. I wanted him to know every inch of my brain. I wasn't afraid. I was letting go for the first time since Elijah. I had everything packed up and ready to ship off in Eric's direction.

But he never asked. Never wondered. Never questioned my thoughts at all, really. Because why should he? He had already found his match. He was taken. Unavailable and un-wanting of me. It was unnerving. So I just told him. I let everything out, and he didn't judge. Didn't judge, but didn't care.

I told him everything.

"I can't like you."

Of course I can like whoever I want to, but liking him was so hard. It was like taking a bath and then sticking your fingers in an electrical socket. I knew it was bad. Of course I knew it. It stung like a hundred bees, but I couldn't leave the honey.

The sticky truth was, he didn't need me. He didn't see me. I told him.

"You look at me, sure. But after all these months, you don't see me. And if you haven't seen me yet, you never will", I whispered it to myself while slapping the letters on the keyboard. I would have never said this in person.

"I see you!", he typed back.

No, I thought, You don't. You never will. You just don't understand.