Saturday, Feb. 14, 2004 | 2:08 PM

I had an hour and a half long conversation with my sister this morning, who is taking a semester in Ireland studying music at University of Cork (which used to be called Queens College�a far better name in my humble opinion.) She�s having a wonderful time and I am going to visit her in May. Her senior year of college is next year. She�s a very talented composer, bassist, and pianist, and she�s thinking of going to grad school in Boston, which excites me to no end as I don�t have a better friend in the world than her.

Anyway, we had a talk about The Boy, and she had some really insightful things to say. I told her about my whole daddy revelation, and I told her about a semi upsetting conversation he and I had yesterday

She made me realize that something I always do with people I�m involved with is remain passive and changeable and mutable as possible, and allow him (or her) to dictate the flow of the relationship because I figure hey, I can go a million ways anyway and I can take care of myself emotionally. It�s sort of a dishonest thing to do. For instance�I�ll spend one evening with someone slow dancing and kissing and holding hands and being intimate, and my feelings for them will be really romantic. And then a couple weeks later they�ll tell me that they don�t �get the whole relationship thing� and �don�t feel the need to have someone else in my bed every night�.� And I�ll switch right into Independent Grrrl gear and go off on my spiel about how most people in relationships are looking to be validated and how that�s bullshit and isn�t it great that we have such a nice �platonic� relationship� etc.

What a load of fucking crap.

I cut myself off from my own feelings in order to make the other person feel safe�a person who is obviously freaking out and vacillating because they don�t want to get too close or don�t know how they feel or are sensing how much I care and are terrified or whatever. After awhile, that drains my batteries and eventually I wind up feeling resentful for having been dicked around. But the thing is, I let myself get dicked around and the other person isn�t even conscious that they are doing it. I allow the situation to happen.

One really wonderful thing I�ve learned is that love truly is just giving of yourself without thought of return or expectation, and it is just celebrating the other person and wanting them to be happy. Very important lesson. But the other part of it is that I need to affirm my own reality as well�and that also means not having any expectations of someone else, but simply stating, �Hey�you can say that but what exactly do you think this is? Kissing and slow dancing and holding hands is romantic and I feel romantically about you.� I tend not to do that because I don�t want to scare the other person away. I indulge them so they won�t freak out and leave. That�s not very authentic, is it? You can love someone deeply and unselfishly and still affirm how things are for you.

I love him so much and I don�t want to lose him and I�m afraid that if I call a spade a spade I�ll frighten him and he won�t want to hang out with me anymore. Fuck that dude. If that�s the case then what we have isn�t real anyway and I�m tired of playing pretend. I�m not making any demands on him. I�m not putting any pressure on him to be My Boyfriend or provide me with a white picket fence and a set of Crate and Barrel dishes. But I need to feel like I can share myself honestly and fully. I�m not even worried about him saying something like, �I don�t like you in that sense.� I don�t need to be with him romantically if that�s not the organic way this relationship is going to go. But what I am scared of is putting my feelings on the line and him getting terrified and shutting me out of his life. But you know what? If he can�t deal with it, then he can�t deal with it. I don�t have any control over that. I�m doing us both a disservice by going along with whatever he says in any given moment. I�ve played that fucking game already and all it does is cause me to close off more and more and become hurt and disappointed and the relationship suffers. It�s better to deal with all this right off the bat than let it fester and rot until it chokes to death what is so beautiful about our connection.

He�s coming over in a couple of hours. I mean hello�it�s fucking Valentines Day for fuck�s sake. I�m not looking for anything specific to happen�seriously. I know that sounds like bullshit but it really isn�t. The only thing I want is to be honest and real. I don�t want to play games. We�ll see what happens.