What happened?

I have something i cannot figure out... I have a guy friend, who I have known for about a year. We were pretty close last year, but then during the end of last year, i decided to distance myslef from him. Why? coz of the fact that he has liked me from Day 1 and will not give up. I know that he has the right to love me and do whatever he wants. But the thing is.. I'm tired of people saying bad things about me, such as, me using him -when I'm not! and that I'm being mean to him coz he likes me for so long and that they don't understand why I don't like him when he does so many things just for me. He made me laugh whenever i was sad or upset about something. I could talk to him if I needed to, and at the same point, he could tell me anything and trusted me enough to tell me pretty  much everything. And I treasured that. 

I don't know why I do not love him the way he loves me. But all I know is that I don't want him to carry on loving me as that it'll only hurt his feelings, the longer he loves me. So during the last few months of last year. I tried avoiding him, made excuses when he wanted to meet up with me etc. But in Spetember, something tragic happened to him.. his father passed away.. and that was the time I was trying to avoid him etc. I did sympathize for him. Thought the sad thing was I didn't know when the funeral service thingy was.. coz no one told me.. and after that, many people asked me why, ouot of all his friend, I, didn't go to his dad's funeral. I felt really bad =(

So during that time, he got close to one of my friends, Autumn*. Though me and Autumn were not very close, we still talked at school and everything. But when Autumn and my guy friend got close, and people saw them together in town a lot, peopele thought that they had something going on. All my firends told me about it... (also during this time I was really sick) as I didn't go to town very often.. obviously I didn't care what they were doing. But many of them would ask "Oh, so are they going out?" and many other hurtful things about/to me and Autumn.

At the end of the year, Autumn had to go to Wellington, as she ws going to the Uni there. And somehow, for the first time in about 3 months, i hung with my guy friend. I guess, in a way, we did have a lot to talk about... I don't really rememeber whether it was awkward or not... but I'm sure it wasn't, seeing as he like to talk.. (haha).
And so during those past few months, I guess you could say that we ended up hanging out a lot and talking through out past 3 months, of what had happened etc.

But then at the end of January, I went to Hong Kong for about 3 weeks. Afterwards, he told me how he was scared that I would have changed, like the way his friend's friend had changed towards him when she came back from her country. And I was obviously the same person. From then on, we did hang out for a bit. Then Uni was about to start for me. Somehow, I wanted to do what i had wanted to do last year during those last 3 months.. I just didn't want him to keep liking me, now that we go to Uni, I wanted to make a fresh start and not like me anymore.

So far, we have talked pretty much eveery week. And last week, was probably the week that we've hung out and seen each other the most. I felt that maybe I was kinda losing this close friendship with him...
But during that week (last week) I felt that it was great to be his close friend again ('knowing' that he doesn't have those feelings for me anymore).

To be Cont..

*Names have been Changed