A page from Jennifer's diary!

I was heart-broken and shattered when I had failed to find love for me in the eyes of the one I loved. I felt insecure and exposed to the harsh world. I wanted to protect myself from getting hurt in love. I thought the best way for it would be to hibernate, to cover myself in a tough shell, a shell of protection around me which ensured that nobody could get close enough to hurt me.
But maybe pain is inevitable. The shell around me started diluting in Peter’s presence. Instead of being the tough girl I was, I started being delicate whenever he was around, for him to take care of me. I considered him to be special and magical to have been able to break my wall of insecurity.
I never knew or realised but in no time I had totally linked myself to him. He was the only reason for my happiness and his happiness was my only concern. And gradually he became my weakness. Maybe he realised it too. Unaware or aware of it, he started using this for his advantage, for his convenience.
Initially I had no problem with it. I just wanted to be with him. But as time went on, it became really hard for me to manage his mood shifts and work accordingly. I was losing my identity. I was not an individual anymore, everything I had was his. “I” was his! Completely.
The worst part of the situation was that he knew that I was nothing without him and I knew that I was nothing for him. It was a painful comprehension. He started becoming increasingly agitated at simple things and I constantly felt like a burden on him. It was as if I was pleading him to stay with me while he was merely doing me a favour by being there. What hurt the most was that whenever I tried voicing it out I was entirely blamed for all the spats in our relationship. I was accused guilty for all the quarrels and distances.
I constantly suffered for not being me, for always stopping myself to let out my feelings, for persistently trying to somehow work out the relationship and for continually failing to do so.
Maybe I had overdone it when he was not prepared for it. Or maybe it was the other way round.
Whatever the case was, we had failed to reach out to each other as we had expected and had left a gap in between us which was almost impossible to fill in. We were falling apart. Both of us were helpless. We had to separate our ways. It was really painful. By that time he had become a part of me without whom I was incomplete. I was difficult for me to tear myself away from him.
I lost count of the days after that when I hibernated myself before I could move on. I could not stop tears from rolling out of my eyes. My own tears felt like burning flames on my cheeks and like bullets when the dropped off from the bottom of my chin after clinging there for a long time. As each day passed, I felt completely drained out with no hope to get my life going. That was an abrupt unexpected pause in my life and everything around me seemed static.
I was wounded when I first fell in love but Peter had given me hope that it would not happen again. Peter had healed me from my first wound only to be again scathed, ripped apart, leaving me more miserable than before. When I had somehow adjusted myself to the loneliness, he came into my life to show me the wonders of love, giving me a reason to live and then suddenly shattered all my dreams to bitter truth.
I still am grateful to Peter for lifting me up when I had fallen from great expectations of my first love but he always made me realise the fact that he was the reason for my happiness. He took credit for all my happiness. I was sensitive to his regular reminders that I was incomplete without him.
But all that is past. I have come over all of it now. There is again warmth inside my heart. I have learnt to live life now. I have removed all the barriers, all the walls around me which had previously restricted me to trust people and connect to them. Now I make sure that there is never only one person I am attached to, only one reason for my happiness. I have learnt to occupy myself with more than one person so that there is always support beneath me. Moreover I have learnt to support myself.
I have realised that I should not lean entirely on a single being making it difficult for him to bear the weight.
More importantly I have forgiven Peter for whatever happened in the past, because it was partly his fault and partly mine. So we should share the blame too.