i can't help but be ME(an)?

i was just thinking about the one major thing i really appreciated about old william. that was the fact that he really accepted me for who i was, all of the time, no questions asked. i never had to explain myself to him. he never took the sometimes hurtful things i said to heart. things that most people would push me away for because he knew that i loved him though i didn't show it through my words. he saw it through my actions. the times i would come over late at night and hear him drunkenly rant about his loneliness and depression. i probably said just about the worst things someone could say to a person and pushed him [away] as hard as i could but the difference was that he but never once pushed me back. i think in a way, that's true and authentic love. but i'm not going to sit here and say that our relationship was perfect because clearly it wasn't. in fact, it was completely flawed in many ways. the major problem in our friendship was that it was conditional. there were terms and conditions. he accepted me completely for who i was so long as i was in love with him. so long as i returned his romantic feelings of love. but i didn't and so...he was gone. he is gone.... as previously mentioned, expectations will always exist. if you expect that we will always fight everytime we talk, then we WILL ALWAYS FIGHT EVERYTIME WE TALK. because your expectations affect our relationship. if you expect we won't get along, it will soon become a self-fulfilled prophecy. the one great thing we can take from my relationship with old william is that he always expected the BEST of me. even when i was saying horrible things, he EXPECTED that i didn't say those things out of hatred...out of wanting to argue. he may not have known WHY i said those things but the point is that he EXPECTED that i wasn't doing it with the wrong intentions. i wasn't doing it to hurt him. I CARED ABOUT HIM and he KNEW that. that's all i asked for. it's a really sad revelation when you think you've finally found someone that accepts you for who you are no matter what and it turns out you were wrong. they only accepted you for who they wanted you to be. sadly, you thought that it was real and that there was a natural chemistry and a genuine acceptance of who you were but you realize that you can't really be yourself around that person. if you want to keep that person in your life, you'll have to hide the real you. mask it. why? because when a bit of you that this person doesn't like comes out, they immediately shut you down so you shut yourself off. you go back into the shell you came out of. you find yourself wanting to say something but instead you say sometihng else in order to appease that person or prevent that person from accusing you of starting a fight they don't feel like hearing.