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Location: Home.
Listening: "Iowa" ~ Dar Williams.

But back to my point.

I hate reading people. Often, I can see their desires, their fears, their weaknesses, and their motivations at a glance. I can feel when I am wanted. I can feel when I am somehow hindering fate.

You see, in my mind, part of love is giving people the opportunities they desire, but are somehow unable to ask for. So I see their needs--and I often try to answer their unspoken questions and deliver their desires to them. More than once, this has been at the expense of my own needs, but I've understood the necessity of this.

Pop-psych calls this a "martyr complex". It's not that easy, kids. If you've ever been faced with the overwhelming sense that you should leave a group to enable an interaction to take place, you know what I'm talking about. Did you stay? I have--and the resulting feeling of having stood in the way has overwhelmed a desire to do it again, no matter how deeply it affected me. I would rather not be the obstacle. Sometimes I know that it's just not my place to be there.

Sooner or later, it comes down to fate. I might as well be the one. ~ Billy Joel.

The issue is, I keep putting off my own path to enable others to follow theirs. I realize that this is stunting me somehow. I know that I should press forward and realize what is meant for me. It's not easy. But I recognize that, as they must go their own way, I must go mine.

It's finding the fortitude to do it that's the daunting part. I told a pretty red-headed girl tonight that love is "hard fucking work". I wasn't kidding.