... Fall in love, that is.

Okay, let's just get this out of the way right now. My ideals aren't very popular, but rebellion against The Man defines my life. See? Like this ->



I certainly agree with various points my three closest friends here (well, except maybe Syn. Sic burn!) - Lantis, Ix, and Syn - have made. In general, they were quite right about that girl Nia whom I liked from last year, who first made it pretty obvious she had accepted me at first and then suddenly one day decided I was a creep who should be avoided at all costs; hey, I'm not so low on self-esteem that I can't wash my hands of that and say that, pshww, I would have been eager to prove myself a wonderful and loyal boyfriend to her, and therefore it is to her loss. In fact, Ix even referred me to this link at the time - http://www.the-niceguy.com/articles/Me.html- and I actually agree with a few of the author's points. I guess where I differ from the other three guys on that subject is that, at the same time, I am not deterred at all. I am eager to find another potential Princess in my life (although of course, I am not going to just assume a mere first-glance attraction is definite proof of love), and just because it turns out I may have been wrong about Miss Nia, I will not relent.

I'm not even sure I'm fully prepared to take on even a girlfriend much less a wife - I realize that with love comes great responsibility as well as an overwhelming joy - but still, I do miss the feeling of at least being in love. I suppose I am hoping it just springs up naturally one day as I come to befriend more and more women I see (giving them the benefit of the doubt, anyway), that in my lavish praise of their seeming beauty and sweetness I will eventually come to feel love for one of them. My attraction to Nia may have ended in ruin (well, maybe that's a strong word; it's not like a relationship even got off the ground there), but I did at least finally get the courage to ask a girl out (my first time after twenty-eight years of living in fear!), so I can always use that as a <insert stereotypical anime-style "fight!" pose here in lieu of a specific word> to instill the confidence in me to try to get to know a girl better in the future. Besides, if I'm not willing to suffer any degree of rejection, I'll never get anywhere.

But here's a story about Sarah's Knight none of you have ever heard before; it's pretty much the reason I was led to become the Protector of Angels, although the "Sarah" in SK represents my favorite name for a girl, as it's basic meaning in Hebrew is "princess", and since I refer to the ideal life-mate I hope to find one day as "Princess", well, there you go. Besides, it's a freakin' awesomely original Internet alias and you damn well know it. ^_-

You see, my confidence in finding a truly noble and beautiful Angel of Mercy to give my heart to one day comes from this: not just naive hope, but proof. I believe that, right alongside the "bad" women in the world, there are many perfectly lovely lasses out there, as near perfect to being angels straight from Heaven as any human girl can be, because I once loved one such girl dearly, and though my love for her is that of admiration and friendship now, I wouldn't give up the knowledge and memories of that love for ANYTHING. In my eyes, the story came to a happy ending, and we aren't even together.

That story I wrote three years ago, about the high-school boy falling in love with a female classmate and giving her the rose? Yeah, the boy in that story was me. I was writing about a real-life memory. And while hasty and impulsive in nature, to this day I do not regret my decision to remain at the side of the girl I loved one bit, even at the expense of a personal dream to be accepted into another, bigger university out of town that I had held for many years. Who knows where my life would be right now if I had followed through on it, moving away far back east to go to college and study to become an animal doctor and leaving southern Arkansas behind forever? I wouldn't have stayed in contact with Lantis, probably, and therefore I would never have met any of you here at the Mag, and so forth I certainly would never have become Sarah's Knight, Protector of the Pretty Angels.


Let's see .... It was the first day of my senior year. A small group of students who generally remained in the same classes throughout the day, the thirty of us seniors were ushered into the sanctuary by the guy who was the new principle at the school, along with the ninety or so other students in the rest of the entire high school, for the same old proceedings of knowing what to expect in the school year to come and all that jazz that no prospective college student ever cares anything about; we're just trying to survive the last year in a series of four that we've come to hate with a passion so we can get the heck outta dodge and experience the new-found freedom of the adult life. As small in number as we were, the time was taken for the completely new students at the school to stand up and introduce themselves. naturally at this time Lantis and I are paying no attention and spending our time quietly cracking jokes about the teachers and why both they and all of the rest of school suck immensely. But out of the corner of my eye I notice a tall, brunette-haired girl rise a few feet in front of me and shyly introduce herself as (you saw this coming) Sarah, and immediately all sarcasm fades away from my entire personality, ... 'least for the moment, just long enough to take note of how pretty this new student was.

To my memory I actually don't believe it was love at first sight. I took careful note of Sarah's friendly demeanor, gracious personality, and quiet and kind treatment of her fellow human beings over the next few months, and I suppose I must have simply - one day soon enough - found that she attracted me for these very reasons. I'm not sure when exactly it was that I had decided I might be in love, but all I can tell you is that sometime in the October of that year, two female classmates I had come to befriend and talk with quite a bit once teased me while we were alone in the classroom about it being obvious that I had a crush on another classmate named Summer, who was also bright and friendly like Sarah but in a more energetic way. I was embarrassed at this, as it wasn't even true, but the two girls persisted, laughing at me all the while, so before I could stop myself and think of a rational defense I just simply blurted out, "It's not Summer at all! I'm in love with Sarah!" ... And I sort of shocked myself when I said that. Of course Amy and Megan gushed and went through the usual expected "Awww! That's so sweet!" routine, and it's like their approval of my choice led me to actually believe that what I was saying was actually right, and I need not deny it or be ashamed of it. ... So, there I was, the next month, cautiously approaching Sarah one November morning to ask her to meet with me out in the lobby of the school once the day had ended, and it was to do something I had never done before (because there was never any reason) - confess a feeling of love for someone. I spent the rest of the day a nervous wreck, of course, but somehow I just sort of managed to take a deep breath and then blurt it all out at once to Sarah's unassumingly smiling face. I don't think she had expected it at all, but perhaps the reason she didn't to blush so much as she just seemed to smile indulgently was that, even in her innocence she could not help but think of me as nothing more than a silly child who would forget his little "crush" on her soon enough. Now that I think about it, someone who has known you for only three months or so and just up and declares "I'm in love with you!" one day probably doesn't come off as very determined and mature. She was grateful, but I really tried to cut short our meeting myself before giving her a chance to say whether she could return my feelings or not. I don't remember much about that day, really.

The last school day of December, just before leaving for the day, I remember presenting a small and very modest token of affection for Sarah and a few other female friends of mine (the first time I had given a gift to any girl at all, I think; perhaps that day was the true birth of Sarah's Knight?), in the form of an angel-shaped ornament, with the respective friend's name written in calligraphy upon it. I don't really know why, but Sarah in particular seemed very grateful for it, and completely unexpectedly rushed forward to hug me with this gushing "Oh, thank you!" This stunned me. I knew very well it was not a hug of affection at all, but still, I never even thought she would wish to make physical contact at all with the impetuous rugged-looking kid and his rebellious tendency towards just about everything in the world but the girl he had begun writing sappy love poetry about many nights at the desk in his bedroom ever since his confession a month before. I was to meet up with Lantis at his house right after school that day to finish our recording of playing through Resident Evil 3 or something, and I enter his room, still shocked and trembling, stuttering, "Sarah .... She hu - hugged me .... Holy ... cow ...." And Lantis is all, "Dude, are you in shock? Do you need help?" (Many people have experimented with sex several times by their senior year of high school, and here Will Fentress is, just having been given his first hug by a creature of the opposing gender. Yeah, that sums him up about right.)

I don't know; I might have done the girl a disservice by being in doubt that she even took me seriously when I had first confessed to Sarah that I loved her. But nevertheless I had begun to wonder. She did not speak much, other than with a good morning if we happened to walk through the front door of the school together in the mornings, and I do not recall being able to engage in many deep conversations with her since, at least not while we were alone. But then again, that has to be only natural. Could you just continue to act as though nothing had happened at all after someone confessed their love to you, speaking with them as normally as you would your other friends? So, to make certain she would know my love was far more more than some silly crush I would be over in a month or two, and hoping it would make her happy to know I was being thoughtful of her in doing so, on February 13th of that year I bought an (admittedly) cheap rose from the store (give me a break; I was only in high school) and spent the entire night at work fretting about how I was going to get through the next day openly showing my love for Sarah by giving her the rose without making a complete stuttering and blushing fool of myself. I must have also spent at least an hour struggling to get to sleep after lying down at the end of the night, too, praying I would find the courage to do this. Of course, I had also hoped my action would somehow win her heart, too, or perhaps that she would see my seeming loyalty as a reason to give me something of a chance. And, well, the next day the story I had written and put on the forums three or four years ago had come true, except for the part about my having pretty much decided to forgo my plans for the immediate future and stick around southern Arkansas to go to school in the nearby town of Magnolia right then and there after I had given Sarah the rose and she left for the day. In reality, I had already been thinking of staying at her side. Call it puppy love; call it hopeless; call it stupidly romantic; or even misguided attraction. Whatever it was, I couldn't have been happier with my decision. Suddenly going to a big-time school, or being back with most of my family in the livelier, prettier city of Chattanooga where I had been born did not seem so important anymore. I do not expect others to really understand why I would do that, wanting to be so close to someone who clearly did not possess the same feelings I did in return, but I wasn't hopeless that she NEVER would, and besides, in my eyes I just could not imagine it was real love if I would just give up on her so soon, with this attitude of, "Oh, well, I don't have what I wish for (her returning love) just yet. Forget her." Love is about wanting to ensure the happiness and well-being of the other person, not getting what you yourself want right away, yes? Sure it pained me sometimes to see that that Sarah could not bring herself to love me (although in the four or so years to come, seeing her eyes sometimes I wondered if in her kind spirit she had often contemplated trying to force herself to), but the joy in being near the person I saw as my Princess, offering myself to her as a protector and friend she could entrust her woes and hurt to, demanding nothing in return, far outweighed the pain.

And on graduation night, there Sarah was, as pretty and bubbly as ever, and the only words I could find to say was this, ".... Sarah, in two months, we will meet again", of course hoping she would see these next words in my heart instead, "... And then I will be prepared to spend the next four years of my life following after you".

"Yes, until then, Sir Knight," she smiled.


Overall, I guess if you can picture all the times Syaoran Li kept blushing in the presence of Sakura after he had developed feelings of love for her, and she seemed completely, naively oblivious to it all the while, then that was me (so far in the story).



_________________


Whew. That's enough for now, I think.

That was just about the sweetest story I ever read. I was the same way in high school... a cynic, the smartass, until I met my ex back then. Though the lady came onto me, and I refused once for sheer confusion. I don't regret the relationship in the least, but high school stories like this make me smile. I followed her to college and do not regret that either.

I do think she has some feelings for you in some capacity. I do think that above a friend's.

Ah, well, I appreciate it, Fay. But, you see, I hope you meant that in a past sense; I did not want to say it yet until the end of the story, but I relinquished my love for the girl in good faith shortly before I came to the Mag. And she married a friend of mine from college two years ago.

... So, you know, it would actually be wrong in this case for either of us to presently have romantic feelings for the other. ^_^

It's just that, because she sort of led me to become a "white knight" sort of figure who is hopeful and optimistic about love, I still have a special place in my heart for her, ... as that "angel of mercy" who gave me hope to love and marry a wonderful woman some day.

And I hope, so long as it does not conflict with her love for her husband somehow, that I too hold a special place in her heart, as that relentless pest who followed her around for five years.

There's more to the story I wish to reveal, but I got a bit tired of writing for the night. ^_^

Dude, now I feel really bad for the things I said about your story back when you first posted it. I'm sorry, man.

In any case, loving someone can change you quite a bit, for better or worse. It's also not sunshine and rainbows. The first few months can be perfect as you and the other person (assuming they love you back and are dating you/want to date you), but that newness does eventually wear off and that's when you test yourself and if you actually do love the person you're with. Sometimes you'll find annoyances and there may be things you don't like, but you have to remember the fundamental, important things that had you love her (or him) in the first place.

I never figured I'd be in the position I'm in, and quite frankly, sometimes I'm still surprised by it. I've made a lot of changes, mainly for the betterment of myself, and I feel like my life has improved for the most part. Sometimes love can bring the best out of you, or help encourage you to have the courage to do the difficult thing you truly want rather than what's easiest and most comfortable.

I think you'll find someone you'll love and want to be with one of these days. It may be how you imagined it or it may be a complete surprise and not close to how you figured it would go down. When it comes down to it, just be yourself, and the people who want that kind of personality and lifestyle will accept it and enjoy it. You can go out and find it or it can find you. It just takes a risk on someone's part to get it started. I know I pick on you sometimes about the white knighting and how Sarah's Knight is the higher class of White Knight, but if that's who you are, then that's enough, and it's what somebody is going to want.

Aww, sorry it didn't work out for you and Miss Nia. But I'm glad you're taking it well. We DO learn from these things. I wish I had a good memory from my school years... Those years did help me shape my thoughts but overall, they weren't good years. Too much fear and confusion back then.

Don't worry about it. We were cool a long time ago over that.




True. I guess I would just like to think that having a positive and hopeful attitude will allow me to get through the rougher spots with my Princess. In an act of sheer discouragement, when I finally revealed to my parents that I was in love with someone (Sarah), one of them was like, "How do you know that? After just a few months of dating her you could want her out of your life forever because you found some things annoying about her." ... Gee, thanks, Mother. And just how will I know that unless I try? There's no sense in just giving up before I've had a chance to prove the veracity of my love. ... Pshww. Now I know why I had kept my feelings for Sarah a secret for at least three full years before revealing it to anyone in my family when they saw that I seemed troubled at times over it.




It's what I'm livin' for!

Yes, I definitely meant in the past. Regardless, I think it was still just... the sweetest thing I had read in forever. The world is very full of cynics, and that sucks.

I agree with Fox though. It is unexpected... but you will know it when you feel it for real. I have improved myself a lot over the past few years in terms of just personal growth, and I have to credit my love for that somewhat. I have a ways to go, but I know I can make it- so can you.

Hah, my mom is the exact opposite. I have some new guys friends (like, we've been buddy buddy for like a week or so), and she's just like, "Are they cute? When are you going to invite them over? Are you going to start dating one of them?" I feel like both can be equally challenging.

But that was a lovely story!

Hah hah. Thanks, Fay, Fruple. ^_^

Well, guess you'd better buckle yourself down then, because I have more I wish to tell.


... It may take a while.

__________________________

Well, then, I shall continue.

Upon returning home from my first day of college, I was greatly surprised - and pleased - to find a letter from a girl I had scarcely seen in the past two months but greatly desired to see again, laying on the coffee table for me.

Of course, seeing her name at the top of the page at first, my heart leaped for joy and I hastily surmised, "Is she writing to say she has come to love me in return?!" A bit of a far-fetched dream, yes, for I considered the lass high above me (like Cleopatra, or Joan of Ark. See?! ^_^ ), but when one is in love as I was, anything is possible. Anything.

It turned out Sarah at least held a desire to see me again, too - or she in her ever-kind way wanted me to at least feel as though she didn't mind having me around - for the letter entailed her inviting me to join a student organization on campus that she'd been a part of for a while, called the Association of Baptist Students, or ABS for short. Perhaps it was so that I would make friends more easily I guess, having a group of classmates of similar faith right there in a small, comfortable hang-out building on campus. But, being a new Christian who had come to his faith no more than six or seven months before Sarah first came into my life, I was still apprehensive of joining any such group in any official capacity, doing things that the rest of the world tends to view as fanatical (even if well-meaning) like on-campus ministry and such, so during that first semester I had only gathered the courage to attend a weekly Bible study at the ABS a few times, and that was it. I can't even really remember anyone I had made the acquaintance of during those few times but Sarah and, interestingly enough, a few of the faculty that had come to work at Lantis' and my high school during our senior year, whom it turns out Sarah had known throughout most of her life because of the ABS. These few people, too, had come to be dear friends of mine, and without me even having to tell them they had all caught on to the fact that I was in love with their precious Sarah. It wasn't exactly difficult for anyone in our circle of friends to guess, seeing the longing and admiring way I always looked at her.

Ah, how many times I wondered if her parents already knew everything when I met them again that first semester at the ABS, or if they just figured it out on their own after a while. I always imagined Sarah coming home that day I had given her the rose, either troubled at my proclamation of love and solemnly asking her parents for advice on what to do about me, or (I hoped) very excited to have been given a rose by someone for the first time ever in her life (she had said as much) and was all like, girlishly, "Mom! Dad! You won't believe that this boy at my school just did for me!"

Well then, that's how it was. Unfortunately our lives did not intertwine at all at SAU for the first two years, for even though her degree of study was similar to mine, we just never seemed to wind up in the same class together, and for some reason I just could not find the courage to go back to the ABS for a while after that first semester. I had begun to miss being around her very much, and strangely, the fact only seemed to heighten my determination to keep on loving her even when I could not see her, rather than urge me in the direction of eventually forgetting her and counting her as pretty much departed from my life.

And then, finally, as the luck of Heaven itself would have it, I stopped holding back, and set out to find a way to be near her again, and at the beginning of my junior year, I succeeded in doing so.

The real part of my five-year battle to keep on living for this one person was soon to begin. ^_^

Nia can go f*ck herself with a cactus.

Well then, shall I continue?

When we last left off, I had found that my love for the Princess had only seemed to strengthen over the first two years of our college life together in which I scarcely saw her, but I decided I would not be just content to hope to see her pass by me in the hallway of the algebra/english comp building an average frequency of once a month at best (although, if one of you guys at the time had been going to the same school as I did, and you too walked by a dark-haired lady with something of a bold fashionable look consisting of a sweater tied around her waist and cute glasses bridging her button nose, you would have begun looking forward to the rare but precious occasion of seeing her in the hallway as well ^_^ ).

I still occasionally visited the small church along the highway just outside of Magnolia where Sarah and her family had long departed from, as I made some friends there, and it occurred to me as I had visited there one day during the second summer of college to ask one of my friends, a gray-haired matronly woman named Sheryl, where the love of my life had departed to. (Of course, I did not describe Sarah in such a way aloud; I made certain to sound as though I was a friend who simply wished to see her again.)

Sheryl guessed right away, though, as it turns out, ... but nevertheless she said that Sarah and her family had moved to a church just beyond the school where many students from the ABS attended. (This new church I am still a member of today, although of course living out of town I cannot attend it often, and none of the friends I had made at the ABS over the years are there anymore - they had long moved on, many of them having married one another and started lives elsewhere.) So a little while after the third year of school had started, and Lantis and I had just settled in to our new house in Magnolia as the broke student/just-out-college-minimum-wage-worker pair that we were, I wandered one Sunday into College View Baptist, and met two people from the first few times I had attended the ABS right away - my former high school principle Nick Covington, and his wife Amy who was an instructor at the ABS. They were surprised and happy to see me after so long, and again, like everyone else in the social circle of my Princess and myself, they guessed nearly right away of the first and foremost reason I had wandered into this particular church. ^_^

And there she appeared in the choir loft, and my heart leaped with joy. They often say that the veracity of love should not be based on puppy-like feelings and emotional surges like toes curling and utter speechlessness (and I agree that it shouldn't be the basis, although I do not think such sentiments should in themselves be prejudiced against), but nevertheless I knew it'd be a long time before I gave this girl up when I inevitably saw angel wings behind her back as she appeared at that moment. I tried my best to avoid staring at her for too long, for fear she would notice, but you can bet I kept my eyes on her for as long as humanly possible (and there goes that song "Eyes on Me" playing off somewhere in the distance). We did not speak at that time, as again there was that general awkwardness of being able to converse normally with a person who has openly declared he is in love with you and you probably can't help but wonder if he, being a guy with the typical male libido, has entertained countless wild fantasies about you yet. However after the service Amy had invited me to come back to the ABS, along with the eager invitation of several of the other college students who were members there, so this time I took them up on it and actually became quite accustomed to thinking of the ABS and my friends there as my second home within the next few months. Of course, this had enabled Sarah to seemingly become used to being around me fairly frequently again and so forth at least hold some manner of conversation with me from time to time. And now that I think about, I am quite certain she knew all along my real reason for showing back up in her everyday life. Considering her nature, I am fairly confident that she was more inclined to see it as charmingly romantic rather than foolish or ... well, Crypt-Keeperishly creepy of me.

And it was then I decided, I would dedicate myself to her forever, somehow, someway. ... A bit naive and foolish, as it later turned out, but my only regret from this story was that I had made this promise to Sarah's very face later on that third year, and even though I am sure she understood that I eventually had to break that promise, I still regret seeming the fool for that. Even if I sincerely doubt her heart was broken when, approximately a year and a half later, I confessed that I would have to relinquish my promise. In fact, at the time she seemed ... relieved ... to hear of that. But I know it was on account of her being worried for me seemingly torturing myself over her (at least, from her viewpoint it would seem like I was being tormented, but for me, I was very happy just being that impetuous kid who would not hesitate to follow her to hell and back). But I am getting ahead of myself.

As self-conscious as ever, late one evening after a gathering at the ABS center I asked the Princess to join me outside where I could speak with her in private, and when she conceded, I asked if she had yet received the letter I sent to her stating said promise of love and fealty. Sarah smiled and said bashfully, "Yes. And ... thank you, Will."

Acknowledging that it was rather paranoid of me to need to confirm if she had even received this letter at all, I tried to explain, "I hope it did not place a burden on you. I just thought that ... maybe you had forgotten that I loved you at all."

"You said as much to me on that day back in our senior year, right?" She queried. "I haven't forgotten at all."

And this ... this was enough for me. She had believed me after all, and apparently in my sense of loyalty too, so much so that even without my saying a word for at least another two years, ... Sarah still assumed that I had not given up on my love for her. And yet, she was such a humble creature, all at the same time. I cannot tell you how pleased I was with this. I guess ... this knowledge gave me the confidence to keep hanging on. I would never even need feel obligated to remind her that I was still here. Sarah ... believed in me. Me!


.... But then came the time, at the beginning of our senior year of college, that I would face two new challenges: 1) the temptation to take the easy way out and follow another girl whom I barely knew but for Lord knows what reason seemed attracted to me, and 2) a new student who would appear within our midst at the ABS and also took a liking to Sarah right away, becoming - shall I say - my greatest rival.

The story is nearly coming to an end, but I suppose I will save that for another day.

Well, I certainly don't have a picture of the Princess I once loved, but, well, ... I suppose she looked a fair bit like Zooey Deschanel, except Sarah's eyes weren't as ... animeishly huge ->




Anyway, I'll be back to tell the ending of my story when I have more time.

Okay, sorry about taking so long. I ... really don't have an excuse, other than, this will probably be VERY long.

______________________________________________


One sunny Saturday during my college senior year I had been sitting tranquilly out on the front porch of the ABS student center with my nose buried in the history textbook, as I was prone to doing on weekends whenever Lantis' GF was over at the house and they'd be making noise. "Hello!" I look up at an approaching voice, and am curious to find an unattractive but friendly-looking enough girl come bouncing toward me from the side of the road. This pleases me. Not until I had come to be an active part of the ABS did I seem to have the pleasure of meeting such outgoing girls who were willing to take the first step toward a nerd like myself and introduce themselves. ^_^

This girl introduces herself as Sarah (to avoid confusion, I shall hereafter refer to her as the non-Princess Sarah), and was a high-school student who'd been taking the day to visit SAU with her class. Also as someone who had been invited to a gathering at the ABS a few nights before, she also wished to know more about us as a student organization. This girl remembered my face from the previous night she had come to the ABS at an invitation, and said that, seeing me just hanging about now, she thought it would be an opportune time to begin trying to make friends at the ABS, seeing as she would very likely decide to attend SAU. We go through the usual first-meeting pleasantries that you'd expect - our names, where we were born, how I'd come to be a student here, and what field I was studying in. She waves and runs off back toward the campus, and I resume my studies, not thinking anything of this encounter.

My other friends slowly begin to filter into the student center, for some unofficial post-football game party or something, and while we go through the usual heys and hellos, I remain in my favorite little sun-basking spot on the porch. Non-Princess Sarah eventually returns, and seems content to hang around Big Brother Will for the rest of the afternoon while the remainder of the group/class she came with goes comparison shopping at the frat houses to decide which group they join when they finally make it to SAU will net them the most drugs and sex with cheerleaders. (Just kidding.) Somehow all this time I am completely oblivious as to why, other than I assume she's simply very outgoing and always eager to make friends, but nevertheless I take this time to introduce her to the other ABS students. Still ... I wonder why she never seems content to engage in deep conversation with any of the others but me. Unfortunately, I remember learning about many rather unpleasant things about non-Princess Sarah all this time, including - what you may have guessed Sarah's Knight would be most averse to - many failed and potentially abusive relationships she'd had in the past, including the loss of her ... *ahem* ... purity, but with not much regret for these things. I've learned to become a more forgiving person since then, and have even befriended a few such girls. ... But there's a difference. People can make mistakes, even many, and to me anyone can become an Angel if she so tries without regard to her former self, but ... somehow I just wasn't getting the hint that this girl even cared, I guess. I can't claim to know the hearts of women, but there still seemed to be a fundamental difference, for instance, between the heart of the non-Princess Sarah that I just couldn't bring myself to care for romantically, and others I can think of who now seem like Angels to me. I don't know how to describe it at all. You might think that, were I the same person now as I was that day during my senior year, in that video I had posted here a few weeks ago with the girl who had eventually been bullied into suicide, that I would have been more inclined to turn her away for the "non-Angel" things she had done, but with Amanda Todd, without even knowing her personally I could not help but feel this willingness in my heart to have loved her and taken her under my wing were she still alive. (Of course, that in itself may be attributed to nothing more than an emotional reaction on my part, but I like to think that's how Sarah's Knight would have acted, anyway.) It's not that the non-Princess Sarah made me that uncomfortable just to be around her, though.

I don't really remember much about the things we had talked about throughout the afternoon, but then once night had fallen, the non-Princess Sarah began to question why I had come here to this school, of all places when she knew it was my original intent to go to a much bigger school in Chattanooga for my undergrad education, and then to UT Knoxville for vet school. .... Of all the personal things she had related to me in the last few hours, heck, why not just reveal that I was here now simply out of being hopelessly lovesick for someone?

"Oh, this Sarah?" the non-Princess Sarah questioned. "Is she here now?"

Having greeted Princess Sarah inside a few moments ago, I directed the non-Princess to look through the window at the brunette-headed girl humming to herself and tapping her foot as she fervently typed away at some essay for school she had been working on for most of the afternoon. "Hmmm, she's pretty," the non-Princess Sarah conceded. Which, I will give her credit for being at least humble enough to admit that. But then .....

"*sigh* Every boy I ever take a liking to, he's already got someone else in his life ...." she muttered.

My heart skips. This is certainly the first time in my life I had ever heard this from a lady. "Um, ... what was that?"

"Nothing ...."

Looking back on that day, I find that I do not feel so flattered now for the reason she took a liking to me, as bad as I feel for the fact. For, I do not consider myself a physically attractive person at all, and I wonder how any girl can ever seem to think so, and so I cannot help but be left wondering what to do about the fact that that is the only reason the non-Princess Sarah was here now; that she saw my face in the crowd a few nights ago at the ABS and that was enough for her. I know that's generally the reason most guys become attracted to girls - seeing someone they immediately think of as physically pretty, but I can never seem to understand why the reverse also works for girls. That's just me. What is there to like about a face such as mine? And now I wonder if my rugged, completely not-SK-ish face only reminds the non-Princess Sarah of her boyfriends in the past who apparently treated her poorly. If that is what attracts her, then ......


But, don't think I mean to sell myself completely short; as the Protector of Angels, I do have my secret weapons. ^_-


"Don't be so surprised; I think you are very cute," the non-Princess Sarah said, to which I could not help but look away in embarrassment. (Is this what I've been putting Princess Sarah through all of these years?) "I am looking for someone like you."

"I can't ... do anything for you, though," I felt it in my heart to say, clenching a fist to my chest. "Even if you offer yourself to me, I cannot just give up on someone I adore and love as much as I do Sarah, just for you. ... I'm really sorry."

I felt bad for this, mind you, but I stand by my decision to this day. Of course I desired Princess Sarah's love, and she did not return it, but how cheap would I have felt just giving up and going with someone who had seemingly nothing more than a shallow attraction to me, and whom I could scarcely find anything attractive about in return? As flattered as I was at her positive view of me, she just wasn't an Angel to me. And no, I was not willing to give her the chance. I was loyal to another, and I would not give her up for just anyone. Probably no one at all.

"Well then, that's my ride home," the non-Princess Sarah said, looking towards the road. She turns back to me. "Consider it, okay, Will? If this other girl doesn't love you back, it is nothing more than meaningless pining on your part."

I retained a smile and said my goodbyes, but inwardly I was angered at this. Who was this girl to say this? I thought. Does she consider herself better? Is she trying to take me by the arm and drag me away? Meaningless? Considering her apparent values about love, who is she to judge?

I know some of you would agree with her, but there's a reason I am called a Knight. I'm standing by my convictions, and I am still happy with my decision even today. To me, going with the non-Princess Sarah would have been to forsake a precious thing I had been fighting for, just to attain something I did not even want, other than a "quick fix" to cure my loneliness. It just would have seemed ... cheap and shallow of me.

.... I never spoke of this to Princess Sarah.

_______________________________________________________


"Are you sure you made the right decision, Will?" My friend Wendy White asked me after I had told her about this day, as we were leaning against the side of my car just gazing up at the starry sky a few nights later.

"Yes. I never asked for something like this, you know," I said. "For anyone to have any desire for me at all - even if it's just a silly crush - is hard enough for me to fathom, but how am I supposed to react when it happens to me for the first time in the midst of my being so in love with someone else? ... Nevertheless, I wouldn't have felt right about conceding to the non-Princess Sarah just for her sake, or to achieve some cheap desire for physical love that I cannot have otherwise. Even if it was cold of me to turn her away." (And now I realize it would have been no better if the Sarah I loved had done the same for me, just to spare me the pain of loneliness and rejection. If it isn't real love, or even an intention for it ... then it just has no meaning, even if it would have been an act of kindness on her part.)

"Well, I suppose you made an admirable decision, to hang on for the sake of your own ideals. You really love Sarah Wilkerson, don't you?" Wendy smiled.

I nodded wordlessly. "If it's been this long, and I have not given up yet," I said after a moment. "I find it hard to believe that my dedication would be nothing more than an emotional surge of puppy love that has lasted for over four years."

"But, you know, she's right about one thing," Wendy said coyly, always having been known to her many male friends as being affectionate and flirtatious in pixie-ish way. "You are cute." You could just see the mischievous gleam in her eyes through her glasses.

Even though she and I were just friends brought together by some whim of fate, Wendy's compliments never seemed to fail to leave my face red. "You're too kind. It is you who is the cute one," I beamed, ruffling her curly black hair affectionately.

____________________________________________


But then came another problem. One that forced me to grow up far more than anything I had ever faced before could have done, and would take much longer than just one day to deal with.


One night around this same time I am sitting in the lounge of the ABS student center, just studying away as always. Other students often came and went throughout the Saturday, because I guess as college students none of us can afford the Internet at our own homes and so the computer in Amy Covington's office is the oft-preferred source of entertainment and essay-writing for a Saturday, including the somewhat new fad at the time known as Facebook. ^_^

But towards the end of the day, there came Pate, a freshman at the time who was one of the most outgoing but type-B personalities I've ever known. He became adjusted to our group right away, even considering how friendly and readily-accepting the ABS students all were (if even an introvert like myself felt comfortable and accepted among them), and was always the class-clown type.

He had become accustomed to greeting Sarah as "Hello, Gorgeous!" But while you may think this would naturally incline me to some hint of jealousy and fear, it never seemed to faze me. Who didn't think of her as beautiful? He was just more outspoken about it.

After greeting me and talking for a while, Pate began talking on his phone to someone as I simply returned to my text and continued reading about the bimolecular substitutionary reaction of complex organic compounds or whatever the hell I was studying in chemistry.

At some point I suppose I heard Sarah's name spoken, so that is how I knew she was the person on the other side of phone, and at the end of the conversation Pate says, "Yeah, I have no problem helping you on that. You are my wife, after all."

I glance up at this with a raised eyebrow, my curiosity raised more at the fact that someone could be bolder than me when it came to flirting with her (I was usually quite lavish in my praise of her), than the fact that naturally most guys would be inclined to be take this statement as a challenge if in a situation such as mine. Immediately after saying this Pate looks over at me and winks as though he just made a clever joke (as he usually does), no doubt completely unaware that he'd just said this in front of a guy who'd secretly dreamed of Sarah as his Princess wife for quite a long time now. ^_^ So I took it as such; the same intentional flirting that I often did with my friend Wendy and other girls I knew from school just for the mere appearance of being a hopeless romantic at their amusement.

__________________________________________________

Sorry, that's long enough as it is for now. I meant for this to be the last part, but, yeah, you know how Sarah's K do. ^_^

Sorry, guys, but for now, unless i feel comfortable making such a lengthy post at work, I'm afraid I must leave you all in a dreadful state of suspense by withholding the last part of the story. You see, I woke up one morning and upon initiating my normal routine of checking Google mail and the Mag while eating breakfast I found a briefly flashing view of the main forums page and then a black monitor screen, and ever since then, even after rebooting/seeing if avast was working properly/etc., I just get an error message when trying to access the Mag. I'm afraid I won't be making considerable posts for a long while, period.



Umm, okay -> (relatively) short version of the ending:

1) Towards the end of the senior year I choose to simply be blunt and ask Pate if he is in love with the Princess as I am. He admits that he's taken a liking to her, but such feelings were not as strong for her as I obviously possessed.

2) Shortly thereafter, there came a Sunday morning in the church sanctuary in which I glance up after the benediction prayer to find a very broken and defeated-looking Princess standing at the altar, the elderly pastor's hand resting comfortingly on her shoulder. He asks of the congregation on her behalf to keep mindful of her troubled state and remember her in prayer. This troubles me, of course, as I have always mistakenly thought of Sarah as truly some sort of perfect angel, but it seems my love for her is only heightened upon seeing her so weak and fragile. I offer my help as a Protector of sorts, to which she accepts, but is still reluctant to share her problem personally with me, and I suppose I have a good guess as to why. Another Sunday very soon after I see the Princess walking from the church to her car in still a down-hearted, head-hanging state of mood. I stop myself from running after her, and choose instead to wait for Pate to appear (somehow it just felt like the right thing to do at the time, and now I see that it indeed was). When he does appear, I put it to him straight: if he wants to be the one to come to her rescue, I wasn't going to resist or object, for she was no doubt well aware of the presence of two different people's affections for her by this time, and I did not want to give her the impression that I was merely in competition with Pate by running right to her rescue and playing hero this time. Besides, I reasoned with him, which of us comes to her aid doesn't matter; we should only be concerned with the fact that she does in fact get help with whatever it is that has her so down. And so he went on to talk to her, and I was left alone to ponder if my relinquishing this opportunity to "prove myself to her" would make it appear to the Princess that I did not care enough to personally devote time to her at all. Which it wasn't true, of course; but still, I did not want her to doubt me.

3) Very shortly after, I begin to see Pate and the Princess together most frequently. Worry and jealousy begin to take over my heart, with me irrationally thinking of Pate as some slick devil who just waltzed right into my life and took Sarah away from me, for no other reason than to prove that he could, and to show me how weak I was. So much did the mere thought anger me that at one time I remember clenching my right fist and looking away when he passed by me on campus and said hello, feeling as though I just wanted to deck him, but I quickly rearranged my facial expression and said, in a steady voice, "Hello."

4) Sometime in the summer following my senior year, a friend and instructor from the ABS informed the students who were a part of the ABS that a married couple who had bought an abandoned church in Carthage, Texas were in need of free help fixing up the place - a "missionary" trip of sorts. Not having done anything like this before, I agreed to come along, not knowing who else would. Unfortunately this time spent with my friends enabled me to have to suffer seeing the girl I loved and the supposed enemy together quite a bit at once, and I feared that it was already over for me - that she had chosen him and not me. There was still one day left to help the church before leaving Carthage, but by the night before I felt I had best get away to have enough alone time to think, and ponder if perhaps it was best to try to deliberately relinquish my emotional attachment to the Princess before the anger and jealousy - not mention feeling of worthlessness - consumed me. Since I was tagging along on the trip in my own car in order to go on to Houston to visit my mother after the missionary work was done, I had used a made-up story of necessity to go on to Houston early as an excuse to get away. Although, in hindsight, I see that a lie to my friends was unnecessary; it isn't as though I had to tell them - right there in front of the Princess, too - the real reason I was leaving early in detail. I could have simply said that it was a personal problem I needed to deal with and leave it at that.
Still, they all graciously wished me goodbye and a safe trip, but before I left, I had asked of a girl named Tara to speak with me alone outside for a few minutes. When she joined me, her being one of a few people in my school social life to know about my love for the Princess, I admitted my intentions to think heavily on and decide whether or not it best for me to give up completely at long last, for I felt that Sarah would surely choose Pate before me soon enough. Tara confirmed my fears by asking me how I did not already know of this; they had announced themselves as a couple weeks ago. Feeling a pang in my heart, I admitted then that this was perhaps God's way of telling me to just let go - my true Princess was simply in another castle. The kind and gentle friend that the outgoing and spiky-haired girl was, Tara hugged me and gave her personal assurance that everything would be all right in the end, even after now nearly five years of fighting for Sarah's love.

5) And so it ended. A few nights later after a gathering at the ABS student center, Pate admitted to me straight that he knew he did not deserve someone so precious, and that he would be sure to treat her well, and then I met with Sarah to confess to her that I would now give up and accept the way things had turned out with dignity and grace, and that before she knew it, I would now be looking at her with mere admiration for her as a friend and distinguished female figure. And indeed, in no time flat, I was able to do just that. All feelings of romantic love vanished completely. It wasn't a difficult process at all.

6) A few months later, upon joining the Mag, I became Sarah's Knight, Protector of Angels (Sarah being a blanket term for all of good and noble womankind). The Sarah I once loved gave me hope for the future, and that may be the sole reason her life ever intertwined with my own, but that is more than reason enough.

The End