my name is rinelis .

i'm on the brink of crying as i start off this entry. i'm not sad, however. ever since i was twelve years old, i've lived my life hopelessly searching for love. i didn't know it then but i do know it now. when i was twelve, i fell for an eighteen year old boy. i knew nothing about love, it just sounded good when i heard it coming from the opposite end of a telephone. i only saw the boy once. we lived thousands upon thousands of miles away from each other. he filled my head with beautiful words, hopes, and dreams yet i was the crazy one. at the time, i thought i was perfectly sane but as i look back at myself then, he was right; i was so far from it. one summer my cousin had asked him why i seemed to be so strung out on him. he told her he had absolutely no idea why because he had never done anything for me to have such a far fetched idea. that very same day i told my cousin i hated him when in reality, i hated myself, and i cried myself to sleep that night. i went on hating myself until this very moment.

i hated myself for being so damn naive to think an eighteen year old boy could ever love a twelve year old he only saw once and genuinely being surprised when i found out what he had told my cousin. i hated myself for acting like i wasn't hurt when he called me a few months afterwards and pretended as though i had no idea of what he had said; i believed him when he told his friend i was going to be his future girlfriend that very same day. i hated myself for falling in "love" in the seventh grade with a boy who flirted with me almost uncontrollably but wouldn't ask me to be his girlfriend because i was what he called prude. i hated myself for telling him i wasn't when i knew i was and he still ran off with the next girl who would make out with him on the back of the school bus on the way back from a school field trip. i was on that bus.

i hated myself for wanting to be wanted and dating someone my freshman year in high school i didn't even like. i convinced myself that saying yes to him would make me like him but instead i avoided him until i finally just broke it off. i hated myself for having my first kiss in the tenth grade at my high school's bus loop to a guy who didn't even have my number and never did... he was my boyfriend. i hated myself for dating my best friend and pushing him far enough away for him to hate me and emotionally abuse me until the point of me not even being able to take one look at him without crying. i hated myself for leaving a good boy for a bad one who only wanted me for one thing and entertaining him just a few weeks ago thinking maybe he did want to genuinely be with me. he didn't.

i hated myself for falling in love... real love this time... and thinking everything in the world was wrong with me when it all fell apart. i believed him when he said he loved me and that we would one day get married. when he broke up with me, i felt as though i had done something wrong when in reality, all i had done was given him the best of me. i hated myself when i found myself saying i could possibly love someone i was involved with for a long period of time who i never even went on one date with. i don't even know his favorite color. i hated myself for running to fetch my headphones so that i could hear your music just the way you had wanted me to. i hated myself for pretending it didn't affect me when all i was listening to was you rap about how she's the dopest girl you've ever met and naively wishing you had been talking about me.

all of this time, i've hated myself for so many things and all of those things point to the unhealthy fascination of needing to be needed... wanting to be loved by seemingly all of the wrong people. my father loves me, i've always known it but he was never there for me the way i wanted or needed him to be so i grew resentful. i sought after the attention from other men in order to replace the longing i had for his attention. my father loves me he just has his own way of showing it. i've let countless of people walk all over me and i cried over men countless of times when i had absolutely no reason to. i gave them all i could give them... i gave them me. i've now come to realize that when that isn't enough, that person is in no way meant for me. all i can be is me. i can't try and listen to all of the music a boy likes hoping it'll get me that much closer to being with him. i can't pretend to be this emotionless creature. i can't act like i don't cry at movies and television series. i can't buy a cd, i can't write e-mails, i can't draw pictures, i can't write letters, i can't do anything to attain someone who ultimately doesn't want to be with me. i can't control how another person feels and when i ultimately meet the person i'm meant to be with, all of the things i did for all of those men that went so unacknowledged will then actually matter and life will be that much sweeter. i have no doubt in my mind that that day is going to come.

i refuse to keep restricting myself from finding who is right for me by letting my path be chosen by all of these others who aren't. my name is rinelis and after this, i can look in the mirror and genuinely say that i love myself. i have a wonderful family, even with all of its imperfections, and i have wonderful friends. i'm single and that's perfectly okay because i won't be forever. i'm going to make mistakes and i'm going to stumble along the way but in all reality, who doesn't? will i let those mistakes and bumps along the road keep me from being happy? you bet your ass i won't because one day i'll meet that person who makes mistakes and stumbles along the road as well but doesn't allow it to deter him from being happy and we'll be happy with each other.

may you all have a blessed night and many more blessed days to come.