Everyone believes that love is an emotional. Love is a feeling. Love is uncontrollable, unconditional, unconventional. Love is none of those things. Love is a choice. I learned this the hard way.

It feels like a long time ago, but really it wasn't. It's strange to think that when everything started, he was just a boy. A friend of a friend, someone who's name I knew but story I didn't. My best friend introduced us, because she was dating him.

I didn't feel anything at first. It wasn't love at first sight or anything like that. I wasn't even sure if he really noticed me in the beginning. But as he grew closer to my best friend he grew closer to me. We became our own team of jokes and smiles and secrets and joy. He told me things he'd never told anyone, and I did too. And the more time that passed the more I fell in love with him and the more I began to hate myself.

She was my best friend. How could I do this to her? My emotions would destroy one of the most important relationships I'd ever had. But how could I control what I felt? The most I could do was live inside myself, and feel what I felt only within the safe perimeters of my own heart.

And it was on Halloween, 11:57 pm while we were sitting on his couch and she was nowhere that she called and told him she was leaving him. And I was there, a shoulder to cry on. But wasn't that how it would always be? Just me and him, but never really me and him. He'd never feel that way about me, and I should never have felt that way about him.

My friend asked me to chose the next day. I had to chose, between my best friend and the boy I'd loved for years. And I chose. I chose me. Why should I have to sacrifice important pieces of me for another? Because I had fallen helpless in love with a boy I could never have? Because I'd secretly betrayed my best friend?

So I chose me. And you see, I don't think there's ever been any other choice, not really. I will choose to love me before anyone else.