#3 (aka: I miss my one-time angel)

I was just looking at some photos I took of a beautiful female friend. She'd say that I'm an aspiring amature photographer. But, really, the location we shot the pictures at and the poses she made for them were all her idea -- I just held the camera and grinned and blushed like a doofus whenever she merely smiled or laughed. Her laugh is so lovely... it's soft, but loud enough to clearly hear. And whenever I hear it (particularly after I say something to flatter her), my stomach flips and my heart skips a beat. Whenever I'm around her, she is my whole world.

But lately, I haven't been around her, and, sadly, I don't really want to be. Because now, whenever I talk with her, she criticizes any issue that I bring to her. I guess she's always done that, but up until recently, I've taken her harsher words with a pinch of salt and called it "tough love" -- I thought, "She's just looking out for me. She's just trying to help me think things through better". But now her words slice deep into my heart, and they burn, and they're leaving scars.

I used to believe that I could be happy with whatever the future brought to our relationship. I thought I would be able to bear any wound or obstacle that we had to endure and overcome for the sake of our friendship. But I'm becoming weak -- I'm fraying at my seams, and I'm ripping toward my heart, and I can't find any way to make it stop.

I know I've been going on and on about how much she's hurting me, so you might wonder why I still call her my friend and why I don't just drop her to the wayside and move on. Sometimes I wonder that myself, but I continue to arrive at the same conclusion: Even though she stuns me terribly with her hard words much of the time, we have had hours upon hours of conversations, and there have been days when we were physically together, when I have felt more respect and adoration for her than I could ever describe. I love her very, very much, and I know that some of her toughness with me comes from her difficult past and uncertain present. As a friend, and as someone who is and has been enamored and enchanted by her, I just can't let her go.