Like a pendulum; back and forth, back and forth...

So I've been hooked on this guy for... pretty much the entire 8 years I've known him. At one point, this guy told me he liked me and I liked him... but we were 14 and 15, living 3 hours apart, and I'm a realist. I knew it wouldn't work. But that didn't make my feelings go away.

Looking back on my high school years I see that this messed up every single attempt at a relationship I had. He was always in the back of my mind because I had him on this pedestal and I was a stupid, teenaged girl and of course everyone simply wants what they can't have.

In college it got worse. We were now only 45 minutes apart! It was perfect! (in my mind.) Yet... first he was just getting out of a relationship and he didn't want anything serious and that wasn't fair to me... and then a few months later he was dating a girl at his school... and he said that he liked me but the distance was too much. It would be "different" if I was there, but I wasn't, so I was stuck for almost 3 years watching him with this... bitch (she really was, and she hated me just as much as I hated her) and yet I was still hooked.

I felt stupid for being hooked on him when he was with another girl. But now that I look back, I can see that he played a part in it. He "kept me on his hook," thanks How I Met Your Mother, and so it was doubly hard to get away.

I took a 7 month break. Deleted him from my phone and, more important, my Facebook. That didn't stop me from looking at his page all the time, checking his newest default picture, hoping against hope that I'd find something... but I have no idea what. I still don't. Eventually I wrote him a letter (snail mail- gasp!) and told him how hurt I was that he had strung me along for so long and was an ass hole and all that.

I still haven't decided if I'm relieved that he responded. That we've been chatting via Facebook (although we are still not "friends"). That I went to coffee with him a few weeks ago. My feelings are still there- just as strong as ever- but my head and my heart continue to go back and forth on what my next move is.

My brain says it's obvious that he doesn't want me the way he once did. The way I want him still now. My brain says that if he wanted me, he would do something, say something about it. He would have contacted me during the 7 months when I cut him out of my life (without warning him) to figure out why. My brain says RUN AWAY, YOU'RE SMARTER THAN THIS.

But my heart... my heart says if you want someone so bad you need to fight to the death. That I need to tell him "I think I fucking love you." Be emotionally open with someone for the first time in your life. My heart says don't just let it all go!

And then my brain and heart duke it out and there's never a winner.

I want to know so bad... but I don't want to embarrass myself and lose him either.