As the first week of classes, I sort of thought it was going to go better than this.

Turns out because of budget cuts, I have to do my internship this fall instead of in the spring. Which means I’m taking 20 units instead of 18, and next spring have to magically find 5 units to make me a full time student, instead of 3. Also, it means I have less time to actually learn how to design, as I must turn in a book layout before I actually do a book layout in my print design class. Brilliant.

Worse still is that my father had a minor stroke on Monday. And no one told me about it until Wednesday.

Course, part of it is because my dad is a huge jerk. He had the stroke Monday morning, and didn’t even go to the doctor. The whole family is there for Monday Night Dinner, and to celebrate K’s boyfriend’s birthday, when my brother mentions that my dad must have gone to the dentist that day, because his face was numb and was drooling.

“No. I just had a stroke this morning, but I’m better now.”

Of course the family flips out and makes him go to the doctor—my mom’s mom died from complications arising from multiple strokes when I was 14—but he doesn’t go until Tuesday, and they don’t finish running tests on him until Wednesday, when he finally gets admitted and they think he’s going to have surgery.

So of course I’m having a minor flip-out all Wednesday. I found out about the whole situation with two classes left to go. And I can’t go home until Saturday, because I have to go to class, and my dad wouldn’t see his being in the hospital as a valid reason for me to miss.

My dad isn’t the only problem I can’t fix, either. I don’t know what is going on with me and E, only that everything feels different—like I’m invading his space and that it’s not the same. And I’m stressed and worried about You, because he only has the most dangerous job ever and I haven’t heard from him since my birthday.

So I decide, emotional wreck that I am, that I’m going to solve the only one I can right now, which is me and E. So yesterday, I pony up the courage to finally talk to him about the dreaded us.

(And I think I should be commended for this, since it took me three years to work up the courage for the last talk with a guy I had to have, and here I’m only three months late.)

And of course it’s awkward. We walked in a loop around the creek and a few buildings, because in no way can I have this conversation sitting on the couch in the BMU, surrounded by people and having to look at him.

Eventually, once we get past the small talk, I finally blurt out “you know I like you, right?”

“Yeah.”

And I lose my train of thought. I know I have to go forward, but I don’t know how to phrase the next question without sounding needy, without assuming anything. Finally, after what seems like forever in my head, and in reality only a few seconds, “so, are we just friends or what.”

This is essentially me out on the line, asking a question that I’ve been putting off because I was afraid of the answer, and even more so, because today I do know what that answer is going to be, because I need to hear it or I can’t function in this friendship without screwing up even more.

“Just friends for now.” Course, I can’t even be sure that he said for now because maybe I just wanted to hear it, and so think I did. I am assuming, and basing our entire future friendship, as if that part never happened, since there are pretty good odds that it didn’t.

I can do just friends. This frees me up to be the loud, obnoxious, honest friend that I am, and that I was afraid to be because I didn’t want to mess up a different sort of relationship. Since that’s off the table, I can finally be frightfully honest about how as a friend, he totally fails in the communication area. Which I told him not half an hour later.

But there’s still this heartache, how I know that even though we are friends, I’m not going to be able to stop liking him the way that I do. That until he dates another girl, there is always going to be the small voice in the back of my head reminding me just how awesome he really is.

Thank god for my friends, who’ve rallied around me, pulling me up when I’m so ready to fall down, keeping me from staring at my bedroom ceiling for hours and instead making me laugh and go out.

I didn’t realize it would feel like this, this heartache I feel for the men in my life. You for being out of reach and in a danger that wasn’t real until now, my dad for being frustrating and not taking care of himself, and E, for losing the one thing I really wanted more than anything.

Things are going to get better. My dad will heal. You will write me an email and let me know he’s still alive.

And I am not going to regret opening my heart up to E, even if I didn’t plan it, even if he didn’t want it. I said I wanted to be heartbroken by the end of summer, if just to remind myself that I knew how to feel, and I knew E would be the one to do it. It’s not broken, but bruised a bit. And in time, the pain will lessen.

And with a heart bruised by E, it gives me something else to worry over than the events I have no control over. Which, odd as it sounds, is probably the best thing for me. Because he is immediate and here and I can run into him randomly throughout my day, which renews the pain afresh, to overshadow the dull ache that is my worry for my dad and You.

I know I’m a weirdo. And I hope next week is better than this.