Confusion and Sleeplessness
(never a good mix)
So Julie visited over the weekend. We had a good time, and continued the somewhat scary trend of eating more than 50% of our meals at Sesame Inn. I am addicted to good Chinese food and proud of it. In fact, all aspects of my Chinese are increasing, as I typed "Shyn Nyen Hao" over IM today which, if someone was dosed up with enough drugs, might be interpreted as a transliteration of "Happy New Year" in Chinese. Miraculously, Margaret knew what I meant. It must be the Irish blood understanding me and the Chinese blood understanding Chinese, because when I tried it out with my Chinese coworker, Shuyu, she shuddered as if I had committed a felony against the Chinese language. She stated that I sounded like "a witch." I could not, however, bring myself to ask for the Chinese words for "bubble, bubble, toil and trouble".
But back to the visit - it was nice, a nice Valentine's Day weekend, though as always when Julie comes then goes, a little odd. She's got the ability for strangeness - if she didn't, I couldn't date her - but there is always a hold on her, sort of a natural societal barrier that prevents her from doing anything out of the norm in public. She got angry at me for walking up the edge of the steps on the side of Washington School as opposed to actually using the steps. To me, comments like that are a bucket of cold water to the face. It's such the antithesis of my natural spirit that it worries me. That kind of incident weighs far more heavily on my mind then say, her stance on religion or politics.
Yet in private, she can occasionally be downright strange and funny, and it's hard to tell sometimes if an issue between us really exists or is a mere byproduct of the fact that we've lived three hours apart for four years, and now seven hours apart for another. And her pluses, like effort and her willingness to always work out a problem, can't be understated.
And, as always when I think about these things, I realize the only way I'll be able to figure out things for sure is if we live in the same city for more than a week. And that in the meantime, to be fully committed to doing whatever it takes to understand myself better. And that brings us back... to exactly where we were prior this weekend. Sigh.
People usually ask how long we've been dating. I tell them over five years. They say, "Wow, that's a long time!"
And what I want to say is, "Sounds like it - but when you see each other once every month or every other month or so, it doesn't seem like it. You work so hard at keeping your relationship in good faith, but it's so hard to make it grow. Then, in the summer, you spend a month at the beginning getting it back to the point where it could grow, and a month at the end preparing it to go into that horrible distant thing again, and you're left with one month of growth a year. So, in all honesty, I sometimes feel like we've been dating for about one year, not five."
But instead, I just say, "Yes."
Then they inevitably ask, "How far away is she again?" And I say, "Seven hours." And they say, "That must be very tough."
And what I want to say is, "Especially after being three hours away regardless of what side of the state I was in during college. And this is after our plan - our light at the end of the tunnel - that after all those years of sacrifice and staying at home on Friday night and the phone calls and months where your relationship was little words in a little box - that we would be more than twice as far apart as before. And how fair is that? I had the privelege of meeting some amazing women in college, one in particular that the thought crossed my mind, 'If things were different...' How many opportunities did I miss, did Julie, to get to know new people, to get to experience new ideas, new situations? I don't want to marry Julie. I don't want to marry anyone for three years at minimum. I just want the chance, I want to give her the fair trial that she deserves after all the sacrifices that she made for these hellacious years now. Where she can at least have a fair comparison to everyone else, where she's not starting forty feet behind the starting line because of her location or living situation. And how many fun nights did I throw away? How many friendships did I outright destroy? How many friends and acquaintances did I push aside? How many other opportunities did I completely ignore without even giving them so much as a thought? And the years of these decisions, some of them so bitter that to think about what you lost and what could have been might drive you into an absolute fury, the sheer weight of five years of sacrifice is so overbearing that it taints your whole perception of what the right choice is? For to throw it away now would be to look back on those decisions - the ones you hide from, that your mind has blacked out and that made your soul bleed - and face them and say, 'I threw this away for nothing.' Yet how do you make a decision to stay based on the past when the only thing that should be in your thoughts is what would happen in the future?"
But what I say is, "Yes."
"Yes, five years. Yes, it is a long time. Yes, she's about seven hours away. Yes, it can be tough, but I'm seeing her in late March, so it's all okay."
Stop asking. I'm tired of giving out the socially acceptable response.
We beat the overwhelming, throat-choking odds that 99% of high-school relationships break up in college. We changed our lives and considered our careers and modified our dreams and hurt friendships and missed out on opportunities. Not to stay together. Not to keep our relationship going. Just so that, one day, we would have the freaking opportunity to find out whether any of the sweat and the tears and the blood we shed was worth it.
Or whether, in the most bitter view, it was all for nothing.
So Julie visited over the weekend. We had a good time, and continued the somewhat scary trend of eating more than 50% of our meals at Sesame Inn. I am addicted to good Chinese food and proud of it. In fact, all aspects of my Chinese are increasing, as I typed "Shyn Nyen Hao" over IM today which, if someone was dosed up with enough drugs, might be interpreted as a transliteration of "Happy New Year" in Chinese. Miraculously, Margaret knew what I meant. It must be the Irish blood understanding me and the Chinese blood understanding Chinese, because when I tried it out with my Chinese coworker, Shuyu, she shuddered as if I had committed a felony against the Chinese language. She stated that I sounded like "a witch." I could not, however, bring myself to ask for the Chinese words for "bubble, bubble, toil and trouble".
But back to the visit - it was nice, a nice Valentine's Day weekend, though as always when Julie comes then goes, a little odd. She's got the ability for strangeness - if she didn't, I couldn't date her - but there is always a hold on her, sort of a natural societal barrier that prevents her from doing anything out of the norm in public. She got angry at me for walking up the edge of the steps on the side of Washington School as opposed to actually using the steps. To me, comments like that are a bucket of cold water to the face. It's such the antithesis of my natural spirit that it worries me. That kind of incident weighs far more heavily on my mind then say, her stance on religion or politics.
Yet in private, she can occasionally be downright strange and funny, and it's hard to tell sometimes if an issue between us really exists or is a mere byproduct of the fact that we've lived three hours apart for four years, and now seven hours apart for another. And her pluses, like effort and her willingness to always work out a problem, can't be understated.
And, as always when I think about these things, I realize the only way I'll be able to figure out things for sure is if we live in the same city for more than a week. And that in the meantime, to be fully committed to doing whatever it takes to understand myself better. And that brings us back... to exactly where we were prior this weekend. Sigh.
People usually ask how long we've been dating. I tell them over five years. They say, "Wow, that's a long time!"
And what I want to say is, "Sounds like it - but when you see each other once every month or every other month or so, it doesn't seem like it. You work so hard at keeping your relationship in good faith, but it's so hard to make it grow. Then, in the summer, you spend a month at the beginning getting it back to the point where it could grow, and a month at the end preparing it to go into that horrible distant thing again, and you're left with one month of growth a year. So, in all honesty, I sometimes feel like we've been dating for about one year, not five."
But instead, I just say, "Yes."
Then they inevitably ask, "How far away is she again?" And I say, "Seven hours." And they say, "That must be very tough."
And what I want to say is, "Especially after being three hours away regardless of what side of the state I was in during college. And this is after our plan - our light at the end of the tunnel - that after all those years of sacrifice and staying at home on Friday night and the phone calls and months where your relationship was little words in a little box - that we would be more than twice as far apart as before. And how fair is that? I had the privelege of meeting some amazing women in college, one in particular that the thought crossed my mind, 'If things were different...' How many opportunities did I miss, did Julie, to get to know new people, to get to experience new ideas, new situations? I don't want to marry Julie. I don't want to marry anyone for three years at minimum. I just want the chance, I want to give her the fair trial that she deserves after all the sacrifices that she made for these hellacious years now. Where she can at least have a fair comparison to everyone else, where she's not starting forty feet behind the starting line because of her location or living situation. And how many fun nights did I throw away? How many friendships did I outright destroy? How many friends and acquaintances did I push aside? How many other opportunities did I completely ignore without even giving them so much as a thought? And the years of these decisions, some of them so bitter that to think about what you lost and what could have been might drive you into an absolute fury, the sheer weight of five years of sacrifice is so overbearing that it taints your whole perception of what the right choice is? For to throw it away now would be to look back on those decisions - the ones you hide from, that your mind has blacked out and that made your soul bleed - and face them and say, 'I threw this away for nothing.' Yet how do you make a decision to stay based on the past when the only thing that should be in your thoughts is what would happen in the future?"
But what I say is, "Yes."
"Yes, five years. Yes, it is a long time. Yes, she's about seven hours away. Yes, it can be tough, but I'm seeing her in late March, so it's all okay."
Stop asking. I'm tired of giving out the socially acceptable response.
We beat the overwhelming, throat-choking odds that 99% of high-school relationships break up in college. We changed our lives and considered our careers and modified our dreams and hurt friendships and missed out on opportunities. Not to stay together. Not to keep our relationship going. Just so that, one day, we would have the freaking opportunity to find out whether any of the sweat and the tears and the blood we shed was worth it.
Or whether, in the most bitter view, it was all for nothing.
posted by Mat | 11:24 PM
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