Well, I had a blog back in, like, 7th grade, and I realized how unbelievably pointless it was. Random crap from the days that went by, usually nothing important. Then, as I started to develop my love for writing, I got myself a couple different handwritten journals. At first, a crappy plastic-covered notebook that had, in my opinion, some of the worst writing I've ever manifested. I don't like to be too horribly critical of anything I write, because I have to start and learn from something, but it was obvious that I was trying waaaay to hard to be a "poet". Now, I have a leather-bound journal that I spill everything into, and so I figured I would move some of the stuff onto the internet. I guess I'm about 8 years too late. 
     But enough of the introduction, the title describes exactly how I'm gonna jump into all this. Her name is Kelly. I met her at her older sister's 16th birthday party during my sophomore year in high school. I'm a senior now, and she's become the sophomore, and I've never felt any less about her since the moment I laid eyes on her (she was soaking wet because she had been thrown in the pool. Hilarious). At first, it was just a lust-ish kind of want. She was pretty cute, and so I figured I'd try to talk to her a bit. We started talking online (since she was in 8th grade at the time, sounds pretty weird now) and I realized how well I got along with this girl. Then, over the summer, things started to get more serious. I'd meet up with her at the beach, and try to talk about taking her out sometime. But then comes the greatest hindrance in any situation I've ever experienced: Hannah.

    Hannah is her older sister, my age, and a good friend of mine. Well, the rule of thumb says that Kelly is now off limits. This caused quite a disturbance for a long while between me and Hannah, as well as me and all of my friends. A junior going for the freshman who is sisters with your good friend is never the easiest situation. So eventually, I had to "let it go."

    Well my junior year was quite possibly the greatest dating year of my entire life. And I say that smothered in sarcasm. I dated two girls for a combined time of 3 and a half weeks, neither relationship in which I can look back on and find much good or learning. They were, as I understand now, the solution my "logical" and "rational" mind came up with to cope with my Kelly situation. Being close with any other girl will always satisfy needs on the shallowest of levels. But every held hand, every cutesy smile, every gentle kiss reminded me of how much farther I was with any type of relationship with the girl my heart so unbelievably desires.
    Sooo, the end of junior year coming into senior year started kinda rocky, as I somewhat confessed to Kelly that I've never been able to let her go, nor will I probably ever forget about the feelings she gives me whenever I see her. This confused her, as it very well should have, as I'd been dating a girl from Mississippi (also named Kellie, ironic I guess.) She was the most serious I'd gotten about any girl outside of Kelly, and we maintained a pretty solid long distance relationship for a couple months. Meeting up in Panama City with a couple friends in July seemed like a deal-sealer, as I felt things with her that I never thought I had felt before in my life. We got along fairly well, and I definetly believed I was in love. But as time went on being away from her, I came to realize what I was doing. I was investing the rest of senior year, as well as my future in one girl, who I wasn't at all positive if I wanted to spend the rest of my life with anyways, as I shouldn't be deciding at my age. These thoughts ravaged my mind for quite some time, until I finally crashed and told Kellie that I couldn't maintain the relationship any longer, and if anything was meant to happen between us in the future, God would make sure it would. So, I dove into senior year looking for an immediate girlfriend, a mistake I told myself I wouldn't make.
    Then comes Karissa. I know you're thinking, "Damnit, Austin. Make up your mind on who you want and do something about it." Yeah, my journal knows what I want, and so does my heart, and soon enough, so will Kelly. But for now, my shallow side won me over and I took refuge in another girlfriend distraction, and I led Karissa on for a good three weeks. That ended tonight at our football team's first home game, because I finally let my heart tell me what was right, rather than my mind. My mind was telling me to stick it out until maybe homecoming, to see what chemistry might come out of more time. But my heart knows that I felt little with Karissa, nor would we ever have a future, and if Kelly's going to know how I feel, I don't have much time. So I broke another heart to follow my own, something I'm rather fucking sick of doing, and a page Hannah could take out of my book.
    Hannah's doing what a normal sister would do. She thinks that it's off limits for a friend to date her sister, and since that's the rule in every other storybook, by God she'd better follow it. Think about Kelly for a second. What if I'm the one guy who can treat her differently than every other pig that's come before? What if the one guy that can truly make Kelly feel as unbelievably beautiful as she is has been waiting in the background for the past three years, dying to get his much-needed opportunity, only to be held back by a stubborn sister. I love Hannah, I really do. She's one of the sweetest girls I've ever met, but every day I just want to scream at her to think about the happiness and feelings of her sister (as well as myself, I won't sound completely selfless) rather than the stupid fear of making things slightly awkward. Our friend CJ has his best friend Brett dating his little sister, and I've seen no evidence of tension or anything between the two.

    I don't know how much more I can say about how I feel about Kelly without repeating myself, as I do almost every day. The one thing I've said to a very close friend, almost sister, Quinn, is that I know from the bottom of my heart that I'll never feel completeness or total happiness unless I get the chance to finally be with Kelly. It's just that the way I feel about her could be taken from the cheesiest romance ever introduced to Hollywood. If I turn and happen to see her in the hallway, I can feel my heart start racing, my hands may tremble. But what makes it so perfect is that as soon as we start talking, there's no lack of words, no silence or uncomfortable pauses, nothing. I just feel so utterly happy and perfectly natural when I'm around her. If one day I recieved a God-sent opportunity to date and be with Kelly, I could die the next day with a smile on my face. I have never tried to so hard to fall out of love with one girl, only to come back to realization with my true feelings time and time and time and time again.

    I'm going to be performing at an open-mic night in Jacksonville Beach sometime soon on a poem I've been working on that talks about how I feel about Kelly (without directly referencing her, of course) and she said she would absolutely love to go. She knows it's about her, as I've written her things before in our more "serious" days, if I can call them that, and she said I have a way with words that makes her feel amazing. So, it's all or nothing when I get on that stage in the next couple months, because everything's gonna come pouring out of me for her to take in. I don't know whether I'm scared or ready for her to hear everything, but I know small relief will come with her knowing my true, true feelings.

I hope you had fun reading that. It's funny how cathartic it is to write it.