Maybe if I had taken their hand I would’ve found someone like Liz. Someone I could be close to. Someone I could have a connection with. I can’t imagine having someone look at me like Liz looks at Max. All that intensity and love and passion. I have had my share of meaningless flings, but I have never been with anyone I really cared about , not like Max and Liz care for each other.

She is always staring at him with that look, the look that I have grown to envy. There must be something Max has that I don’t. Maybe it’s his attitude. I know I haven’t been the sweetest thing to Liz in the past, but I can’t say that I haven’t tried. She’s the only one that knows that I am jealous of Max Evans. I guess I just couldn’t trust anyone else with that kind of secret. What was it in me that made me tell her? I took the journal because I wanted to read it. I wanted to find out more about her, but instead I didn’t. Something told me not to.

I couldn’t bring myself to open it, to flip through the pages ,and read about the things Max would never dare to imagine about her. I know I am not the most open person. I have a side of me that wants to reveal everything. But then I have a secretive side that I cannot reveal to anyone, not to myself. When I look in the mirror I wonder if the same person I see is really who I am. I can’t help but be jealous of Max Evans he has someone to share everything with and I have nothing. There is Maria but she is just there. I don’t feel anything for her. Not like I do for Liz.

Am I looking to hard into this? Do I really have a chance with her? Could she possibly want a guy that is so close minded and not open? I would love to tell her that I have feelings for her, but that’s just not me. I can’t go back on the way I am. I don’t think that we could ever be the way she and Max are. I’m afraid that she’d never look at me the way she looks at him. They relate to each other in a way that I have never seen anyone before. Something inside of me can’t break that relationship.

Something inside of me is afraid. "Afraid of what?" I ask myself. I am afraid to care for someone. Afraid to devote that much of myself and getting my heart broken. I am afraid of showing the true side of myself. The real Michael who is just as vulnerable and insecure as the next person. The Michael who is afraid of love and has run away from every person who has ever tried to care. But sometimes I feel so different. So segregated from the rest of the world. Even those who are the same as me. I just can’t bring down my shield. If I do I feel like everything will fall apart.

Liz makes me feel so complete. At times I think I love her; although, I would never admit it. I guess that I have to keep bottling up my emotions just as I do now. There has to be a way for me to see past Liz, to realize that she and Max should be together.