You know the feeling: when you want to jump into the pool, and swim in the water, but you know that at first, the water seems too cold, too chilling, so you stick in just a toe, maybe two, and brrr! you know you can't just dive right in, so you walk around to the side where the steps are, and perhaps you manage to start with just your feet.

You walk back and forth on the top step, until you think you'll go down just another step, to see if you can adjust to the water around your calves. And then you take another step, down deeper into the water, and then another, until you're in it up to your waist. The goosebumps rise up on your arms, and you step back up and out of the water again.

Your friends call out to you: "Come on in, the water's warm!"

But you're a little scared. You enjoyed the water once before, but you almost drowned that time, even though you knew how to swim, and you're reluctant now. The pleasure of swimming is overridden by your fear of the water, and the mistakes you made in it the last time you plunged in too deep.

So you decide that right now, all you can do is sit on the edge of the pool and dangle just your toes and maybe your feet in the water, until you're comfortable with it again, until you're ready to dive in all the way, in over your head.

And that's what I'm doing now: toe-dipping. Testing out the waters of my journal to see if I want to plunge in again. I've redesigned the pool, and filled it up, but I'm not quite sure I'm ready to swim again. It seems safer to just sit on the edge sunning and admiring the view.

The sign that says the pool is closed is still up; right now it's just me and the water and my fear. I want no witnesses at the moment, no one to know that I'm still here by the pool, contemplating whether or not I have the courage to swim anymore.

Yes, my break from this journal was about Matt, and my humiliation that I had perhaps revealed too much about my feelings for him. The fact that he could somehow be flattered by my expressions of pain disturbed me.

It's amazing what a mere week and a half of time to yourself can do for your perspective.

I'm no longer ashamed or embarrassed. I'm not angry with myself or with Matt. In fact, right now I feel very sad for him, much more so than I do for myself. I was reminded of something I had read in his journal back in May, and I quote it here not to embarrass him, but because it was important to my present understanding and forgiveness, both of him and of myself:

"We all saw what happened when I started having feelings for Shelley. I ran and hid under the porch like a hound dog afraid of the thunder. I want to love someone, in a bad way but I'm scared shitless of letting someone love me. Gee, how does that work. Talk about a screwed up mess."

Those words moved me once before to reach out to him, to try to give him another chance to come to terms with his emotions. But he still wasn't ready.

I have been fed the line before in previous break-ups of "It's not you; it's me", and I always recognized it for what it was: an attempt at breaking up without hurting the other person's feelings. And although Matt never said that to me, this is one time when I don't have to hear it to know that it is really true: the problem wasn't with me, it was with him. Perhaps that is why although I have cried on occasion over this, I do not feel as devastated as I might have expected to.

Maybe time truly has changed his feelings, but what I really believe is that he has just convinced himself that what he felt is not what he thought he felt, because that is far easier than confronting his fears.

At one point, he claimed he wanted to work through those emotions, and I was willing to help him in any way that I could. But I realize now that it is not my place to help him grow up. That is simply his own work to do, although I am saddened by his denials of what we both know in our hearts to be true.

(And lest anyone think that I merely tell myself that to make me feel better, trust me when I say it doesn't make me feel any better at all.)

Perhaps I exacerbated his need for denial by being too open, but that is part of who I am and I don't intend to change that, for any man, no matter how much I believe I love him. I'm not going to hide from my feelings, or deny them, or lie to myself or others about them. I'm not going to compensate for someone else's weakness by covering up my own strength.

What Matt and I shared between us was something quite rare. I believe it was the very thing that people everywhere search for, and too many of them never find. But ultimately, both people have to appreciate the gift they've been given; it's not enough for only one of them to recognize it and expend her energy to try to convince the other to open his heart to receiving the gift.

I've expended all the energy that I can on this; I'm drained, and I need to find a way to build my resources back up again, to take care of me first, and put all others second. I need to find a new gift to receive into my own life, and someone who wants to share that gift with every ounce of his being.

And I can only hope that the next time Matt finds himself so blessed, he has the courage to dive in, all the way, in over his head.

Gee, this water really is warm.