I don't believe in the one.

I don't.

And yet, here I am, 2 1/2 years into a relationship, wondering where I, he, we are going. If I lived in a vacuum, I probably wouldn't be this anxious.

But I don't.

It's wedding season on Facebook. Smiling faces that I only partly recognize, some not at all anymore, accost me with every log in. White finery, bundles of flowers, oh look, their signature cocktail was in a mason jar. Am I some sort of curmudgeon, scowling at the computer screen? 

I don't think so.

Quite the opposite, actually. I'm just a romantic with a bad sense of visioning. Because, deep down, I want it all - the white finery, bundles of flowers, quirky accent-piece. And I'm squee-elated, ecstatic, enthusiastic, when dear ones, like our M and D, decide to commit to each other. I know just how much they care for each other, how much they look forward to seeing each other at the end of the day, how they challenge each other and share inside jokes. I'm blessed to know them and even more honored that they asked me to share their day with them. But when it comes to me, my life, and my choices -

I don't know how to decide.

Wolverine sex?

No, thank you.

The fact that this guy's book is bestseller makes me cringe.

A Little Girl in a Man's World

"I got in a fight with the security guard in my building today."
"You did?"
"Yeah, he was just being such a jerk. And I couldn't hold my tongue."

"You have a problem with men. You have a chip on your shoulder. You even do it with me sometimes."

I didn't respond. A chip on my shoulder?

My whole life I've been the little blonde girl. I'm not very big. I'm not very tough looking. I've always looked younger than my age. And for as long as I can remember, I've been underestimated, undermined, coddled, and patted on the head. "You're very pretty, but what will separate you from all the other attractive blonde girls?" a professor in theater school once asked. At a bar one time I got, "You're very pretty. Do you have anything else going for you?"

If I have a problem with men it's because I have something to prove. I can't sit back and wait for someone to discover that I'm smart or funny or that I can throw a perfectly spiraled football. Someday I'll be completely comfortable with who I am and I'll let people uncover that on their own. But today is not that day.

Hot Time

It was hotter than I could ever remember it being in my dark bedroom. I lay sweating, wondering what I could do to lessen the stifling air that seemed to be hugging my body. The fan was no help. I stood up, closer to the window. No breeze. I went into the kitchen and poured a glass of ice water. It was warm in minutes. I took a cold shower. The air felt hotter by comparison. I couldn’t shake the choking atmosphere.

I lay back down in bed, my eyes heavy with exhaustion and begging for sleep. I began to drift off when my phone beeped. A picture message. “Yum Cobb salad!” Cobb salad. The LDC was texting me at midnight to show me his dinner, and all I could think was, “Cobb salad? Who gives a shit about Cobb salad? Let me know when you’re eating scallops with champagne sauce. Jerk.”

I was wide awake. It took me another thirty minutes to drift off to sleep again, and around 3:30 I was startled awake one more time. This time it was my subconscious that roused me but I was thinking about the text. His stupid text. Whatever the meaning behind it, I was angry. And I was up again.

Another glass of ice water, but this time I perched on the easy chair in the living room, next to the only window in the apartment that provided a trace of a breeze. I sat motionless in the dark, letting beads of condensation roll down the glass, across my sticky skin, and through the thick air to the wood floor below.

I don’t know if it was the ill-timed text or the ill-timed sender, but at that moment, in the heat, I felt lucky to be alone.

The Heart Wants

"So, I'm calling because I'd like to move back home the last week in June. And I need to know if you're okay with this so I can start putting things in motion."

A pause. A long pause. There is never a pause in conversation with my mother.

"Well, yeah, you know we're always here for you! But... what will you do if you can't find a job?"

"I'll have saved up enough money as a cushion and then I'll move to Seattle at the end of August."

"Without a job? Without health care?"

I felt my confidence deflating, slowly, slowly. My chest tightened. My eyes threatened tears.

"I have to do something!" I proclaimed, my voice wavering only slightly. "I can not stay in this job, I can not stay in this apartment, I can not stay in this city. I have to do something!"

I feel so helpless. I feel trapped in technicalities like money and health care when my entire heart and soul is telling me to go.

"I don't think it's that crazy!" I exclaimed, trying desperately to pull her to my side. It's not crazy, you're not crazy, this is not crazy. Maybe it is crazy. Maybe I will get to Seattle and have a break down and think to myself, My GOD, what did I do?!

Or I will stay in this dirty, overpriced apartment, in my dead end, brainless job, in this cruel and soulless city, and I will break down in a different way.

It shouldn't be so hard but it's the hardest thing I have ever had to do.

Maybe you might have some advice to give on how to be insensitive

I have this problem. I blame it on being born under the Cancer sign, and developing deeply emotional relationships with everyone and everything in my life. I cannot throw things away. In any sense. I have a difficult time breaking up with guys, no matter if we’ve been together for a week or a year. I’ve only quit one job in my whole life and I cried like a baby when I told my supervisor I wouldn’t be returning. I have t-shirts in my dresser that I haven’t worn in ten years, but they were gifts and I cannot chuck them. I feel deeply. I don’t know any other way.

I know my time at this job is up. The company is hurting and they can offer me no more money. I cannot be promoted. There is nothing left for me here, but when I imagine myself walking into my boss’s office, giving her an ultimatum and telling her that I deserve to be paid more or I’m quitting, I get nauseous. She hasn’t always been the best boss: she gives me time off when I need it, but wants to keep me chained to this position, sending her UPS packages and helping her fix computer glitches. I am the model assistant. I anticipate needs, I am efficient and upbeat, and I rarely complain about anything in the presence of my superiors.

But I am more than the exemplary assistant, and in staying here I am stifling everything I spent my whole life developing. I am rational in my thought process, bold in my statements, but I am a coward in the follow through. I don’t want to care deeply for my boss, but I do. She has invited me to dinner at her home and cried with me when I was sick and needed surgery. Quitting this job feels like letting her down.

This is just a job. It is a step on my path, and a small one at that. But it has become a part of me and I don’t know how to let go.

Advice

Mid-20s, quasi adulthood, anxiety ridden future pondering. I know I am not the only one agonizing through the two, three, four (or more) year itch.

Talking to parents, friends, colleagues, well-wishers, and pessimists often helps. Sometimes, though, inspiration comes from the unlikeliest of places.

In 1995, Iggy Pop answered a 20 page fan letter from a 21 year old girl in Paris. His scribbled note has some of the most eloquent, heartfelt advice I've read anywhere.

Words to live by: "take a deep breath and do whatever you must to survive and find something to be that you can love."

She's Got a Way

When I was 18, I hated her. She was comfortable and familiar, and I got used to her but in the way that you get used to a limp. I wanted to leave her so badly, and when I finally got a break at college, I couldn’t wait to come screaming back. “Remember me?! I’ve changed. I’ve outgrown you.”

I’m twenty-five now, and I miss her. I remember her familiar curves, her radiating warmth and her distancing cold. I don’t want to go back to her. But my heart breaks when we’re forced apart.

On Tuesday morning, I sat at my parents’ breakfast table, far away from my childhood home, but not so far that her hold on me wasn’t achingly apparent. My mom packed up her bag for the day and I spooned cereal between my quivering lips. I started to cry. "I feel like I'm in third grade again," I whimpered. "Don't make me go to school, mom, I want to stay home."

I know that there are great things waiting for me out there. I am destined to be successful, as a chef, as a writer, as an eater, as an editor, or maybe as something I haven’t even considered yet. But part of me wants to slink back home to the predictability and comfort of friends who have known me since I was ten years old and love me whether I am an exacerbated version of myself, or not myself at all. Part of me wants to buy a car and move into a cheap apartment in the middle of streets I could traverse with my eyes closed. I want to sink down into the cushion of home.

I used to tell myself that there was another home out there for me. I’d learn to love a different city with different people, and I’d create a better life of my own, instead of claiming one that had already been created for me.

I’m not sure why I want her back. All I know is that I do.

Looking for a friend? Look into yourself.

Tonight after many nights I am alone in bed. D is away for the weekend.

This is the perfect setting to be lonely and alone. My body is used to curling up with his. His arms around me. His breath punctuating mine. Tonight the bed is cold. The covers too big. The pillows too many.

But.

I luxuriate in space. I sleep diagonally. I cozy up to all the pillows. Stick a foot out of the covers. And just one finger. I curl and uncurl. I stretch.

And I know. That no matter what, no matter where, I will never be lonely or alone so long as I have myself. Myself to hug. Myself to cuddle. Myself to curl up with.

I learnt this some years ago. Some years ago when I was feeling lost and lonely, friendless and misunderstood, frighteningly, deafeningly, horribly, astoundingly, crazily, funnily, surreally, alone. In the midst of family and friends I found myself to be an island, in contradiction of what John Donne had said. He was wrong, I thought. Or maybe he was talking only about men. Because it is entirely and completely possible to be an island unto oneself. Maybe we were just talking about different levels of connections, different stratas altogether. But in that lonely space I learnt about myself. And happily enough, I learned to like myself. To be friends with myself. I learned, then, to love myself.

Have you ever experienced a film-like montage? Where images of your life come crashing together, tumbling all over each other to make some sense in the end? If ever that happens to me I know at least one of the images that will wollop me over the head: Sister Maria saying "You have to love yourself before you can love anyone else." Grey skirt, grey shirt with a white collar. Grey habit. Wrinkles worked deep into her face. Oblong glasses framing her eyes. Standing on the daiis for the daily school assembly. I see her now. "You have to love yourself before you can love anyone else."

Tonight D is away for the weekend and I am all alone in bed.

I miss him.

But thankfully I don't miss myself.

I am not too much

The LDC doesn’t want me to move to Seattle. He said it. It doesn’t matter how he said it, or his reasons, or how I reacted to it. It is a basic fact that I should’ve seen coming from 3,000 miles away. This is a fantasy. It always was. When the reality of me actually being in his city stared him in the face, he ran scared. Fantasy is easier than reality. Texts are easier than visits. We will never cuddle on his couch in Seattle and make fun of reality television, or go to dinner at the dozens of restaurants in the Pacific Northwest that I’ve told him about. I won’t meet his mom and he won’t meet my dad. I’ll never have to lie to him about eating fast food or smoking a cigarette because he’ll never be able to smell it on me. And at the most basic level, he won’t care.

I’m disappointed. I’m frustrated that this thing I’ve been laboring over for a long time was all for naught. But in a sick, sad, twisted way, I’m relieved. This is what I’ve been expecting. This is the thing I’ve been trying to pull out of him for a year now. “Tell me that this is important to you,” I begged, but I might as well have asked him to tell me exactly how it wasn’t important to him. I was digging for affirmations because I expected that he wouldn’t deliver. It’s like being led blindfolded through a garbage dump but being told you’re in a rose garden. The blindfold comes off, and ah ha! I didn’t want to be right, but deep down I always felt I was.

Seattle will be strange without him. I’ll walk by his office building, and his parents’ store, and the restaurant he took me to on our first and only real date, and I’ll think of him. We’ll probably see each other every once in awhile. I’d feel sadder about this if I wasn’t so hopeful about the other great things going on in my life. Someday I’ll peer out of a TV screen at him from behind the counter of my cooking show, and maybe he’ll feel a little pang of regret that I turned out so great and he missed the boat. Even now I feel that way, that he’s the one missing out, and I guess I should be grateful for that. I’m still reminded of JRenee’s quote, and the more misguided relationships I have the more I actually believe it.

“Be you. You are enough and you are not too much.”

Playing it Cool

I went out with a boy who got me all excited. At long last, after a year of so-so dates (or no dates at all), my heart has done the flutter. I was worried that the flat line might be my fate.

I'm trying to pay attention to my heart, rather than using my brain to draw lines and conclusions that make me feel safe. I'm also trying to shut up my inner dialogue: "why on earth would he flirt with me? clearly there's something horribly wrong with him." This over-analyzing only produces criticism. He has a crazy laugh. Maybe he's a psychopath. He's being too charming. He only wants to get me into bed. He's overly honest. He's apologizing for being nervous. He's trying too hard. He's trying to play me. He can tell that I feel rusty and out of practice in dating, and he's taking advantage of that. Obviously my family will disapprove. I'll never attract the guy who's 'good enough for me' in their eyes. Endless loop of crap.

Decision: I'm going to play it cool. I'm going to let him pursue me, if he chooses, because at least then I can remove him and all the accompanying mental chatter from the equation of my life. And go back to living it.

Ready Ready Ready Ready

I’m tired. And all I want to do is cut and run. The LDC and I hadn’t talked in a week. No texts, no Gchat, no phone calls, nothing. Somehow the balance of this “relationship” shifted from him texting me every three minutes to me texting him so we could at least have some contact, to no communication at all. I’m tired. I’m worn out over a lot of things and it is easier to just ignore the heartache that is him.

He: Hey stranger. Hope you’ve been well. Let’s catch up this week.
Me: Yeah, let’s catch up. Call you tomorrow?
He: Sounds good.

The next day
Me: I’m going to a movie soon – call you after?
He: I’ll be watching a movie, too.
Me: Well, if you want to call after I’ll be up late.
He: Why don’t we catch up over your lunch break? Seems like we’re both too busy after work.

Ouch.

Me: Um okay.
He: Am I off base here?
Me: No, I just haven’t really been on Gchat much lately.
He: You can call me on your lunch break. Who said anything about Gchat?
Me: Oh… You can talk on your phone at work?
He: Yes, I’m actually allowed to leave work whenever I want to.

Ouch.

He: Sorry, too much attitude. I’m just stressed.
Me: It’s fine. I’m stressed, too. I’ll call when I can.

This is too much work. I’m so tired and I don’t need this right now. I want to call him and cry my eyes out and pour out everything I’m terrified of right now that has nothing to do with him at all. I want him to be his logical self and tell me that everything will work out, that I just have to go for it and believe in myself and take a risk.

Instead we’ve become strangely platonic acquaintances. Every little scared bit of me wants to stop all communication right now and then call from the Sea/Tac Airport on August 1 to tell him I moved to his city, and can we start over now?

I’m tired. And all I want to do is cut and run.

"And it's easy for me, and it's better for the soul..."

It's been a rough couple of weeks.

Work is hectic; my family continually teeters on the edge of a breakdown; and rapidly approaching grad school decisions scare the crap out of me. It's as if all of these major life components met and conspired against my mental health.

This crippling anxiety then infiltrates its way into other aspects of my life. Remember when a smiley-face email from the Hungarian was enough to keep me content? Not so anymore. Now when I try to talk to him I feel like a little girl tugging on his sleeve.

I don't mean to be melodramatic but it seems as if (for the moment at least) my life isn't mine, as if I've lost control. Even though it's tempting to indulge in such broodiness, to bitterly retreat into myself, I know better than to get caught up in this whirlpool of emotion. I try to do little things, do my laundry or finish my book, to regain my footing.

More substantially, I will leave the Hungarian alone for a bit. The decision is my own, and that, in and of itself, is a confidence booster. Listening to (and watching) Jack Peñate helps, too...

Let's Hear it for New York

I had had a very New York day. Monday morning, I had just come off a weekend filled with bellinis and blankets, the latter due to the lack of heat and hot water in my apartment. I was tired and I had a headache because I had slept with hunched shoulders and a furrowed brow.

I called 311 to remedy the negligent landlord issue and sent an e-mail to my boss: I needed a day to relax. I baked some biscuits, I brewed some coffee, I watched endless repeats of Roseanne. Just as I was starting to de-stress, the rotating plate from the microwave slipped from my hands and shattered on the kitchen floor. By the time I quarantined the cat and cleaned up the billions of tiny glass shards, my coffee was burnt. It was the tiny little push I needed and I lost it. I called my mom, sobbing about how I hated this God forsaken apartment and the winter and my job and my lack of money and my hopeless, hapless path toward a nebulous future. I kept trying to calm myself down in every way I knew how and everything seemed to slip just out of my reach… literally.

When I woke up this morning I had no hot water again. I hadn’t taken a shower since Saturday night and I couldn’t imagine going into work the snotty, smelly mess that I was. I cried a little because I felt I was allowed, shampooed my hair under the icy faucet, and donned an old cardigan before slumping off to work.

And then I saw this picture. And my knitted brow relaxed. And I felt better.

picture care of garance dore

Missing the mark

I've tried writing this blog post about three times already. Every time, words have failed me; or I them. At times I am too bitter, at times too whiney, at times it just seems like a rant. At times I am too chipper, I turn something impactful into a quick joke with a turn of a phrase, I gloss over the parts that I think will make me sound bitter. And I struggle to strike that balance between reality, emotion, and the perspective that time creates. It isn't just for a blog post. I've tried to write about it before, just to clear my mind, just to take that experience, that weight, that package out of my heart and unwrap it onto paper or a screen. But maybe it hasn't been long enough. Maybe it's one of those things that makes a chapter in a memoir, sixty years after the fact. Maybe it's because I didn't write about it at the time itself. Too much distance? Too little distance? Who knows. What I do know is that if I try to write about the experience I cannot even think of a title. "Moving" or "Middle School and High School" or "The Immigrant Experience" or "New Kid on the Block" or "The Wonder Years." See, even now I resort to gimmicky references to bygone pop culture to push under the rug something I still don't understand myself but that has been such a large part of my still-short life story, and one that has been so impactful as well.

Friends have asked:
- Was it difficult for you, to move to a new place, a different country, at that age?
And I give my much practiced and much perfected answer with just hints of hestitation thrown in here and there at exactly the right moment to give the effect of a spur of the moment spontaneous response:
- Yea sure, I mean, I don't know. It's difficult at first, ya know, you're leaving all of your friends and stuff. And I went to an all girls' school! Imagine being thrown into a middle school with boys! Even girls who'd been in co-ed school all along didn't know what to do with that! But I mean, you know, you make friends, you learn the culture, you find your niche, and suddenly it's like you're a part of it. So yea, it's kind of tough, but it teaches you a lot about adapting to a new environment, ya know? And then you're fine.

Every time I say it a little part of me mocks myself. Didn't I cringe when my parents would say "Oh kids adjust so quickly"? Didn't I want to scream "No! They don't! It's as tough as raw leather!"?

But isn't this the answer that works the best? Do I really want to go into how I didn't know what "Billabong" was? Do I really want to talk about how I stopped wearing skirts because all the other girls shaved their legs? Do I really want to explain the embarassment of having a guy ask you out in awkward twelve-year-old fashion and not knowing how to respond because a) I was twelve and b) about 90% of my interactions with the human species were of the female variety and c) why were people thinking about dating, hadn't I been more interested in barbies until last week? Do I want to go into an explanation of how much effort it took to be able to look into the mirror and see a friend, and not someone to hide? The answer is a resounding no. And so I fall back on my practiced pauses, the little smirk here, and sympathetic sigh there.

And there you are. That response, just like this blog post, misses the mark. Somehow I can't get to the story. The real story. The unshaven legs and the unfashionable clothes story. The smelling like Indian food and not having perpetually shiny bouncy smooth hair story. The tears in the dark and the comfort in books story. The resentment and the anger story. The not thinking dating was normal in middle school story. The realization and the adaptation story. The first awkward friendship and the friendship with myself story. The growing up story.

Perhaps it takes more growing up to write about growing up. Perhaps it isn't just my story, but the story of every girl who ever went to middle school and high school. For now the practiced little speech stands me in good stead. For now maybe it suffices to be able to think back and not cringe, to be comfortable in my own skin.

RSVP

In one year everything in my life changed. In 2004 I was an optimistic dancer/singer/actress with an all-star swimmer boyfriend who went home every once in awhile to Rochester, NY and slept in the same room I spent my entire nineteen years in. By 2005 I was a hurt, embittered English major with plans to be a writer who ached when she saw swimmers and went “home” to a cold empty house an hour north of the city in a hard bed no one had ever slept in. I was changed. And I left a little piece of me in Rochester, dancing and singing and acting with the swimmer.

Every year since then I have had to face a decision. This year is no different. An invitation to a “reunion.” I stare at the RSVP list and I see E.’s face smiling back at me, pressed up against his new girlfriend. I don’t feel jealous. I don’t compare myself to her (okay, I’m more attractive… I’m still human). But when I think about going back to the city I grew up in that is no longer my own, seeing people I used to dance and sing and act with who still ask if I’m performing, and making plastic-smiled pleasantries with E., who just 2 months ago told me I’d “never” hear from him again, I get sick. My insides begin to churn and I have to make a choice.

Nineteen years turned me into someone and one single year turned me into another person completely. E. doesn’t know this new girl, and neither does anyone else who watched me on stage in high school. Sometimes even I don’t know this new girl. She is like a mythical character, part optimistic shining star part hardened, blackened city girl. And when City Girl walks into the bar and greets all of those familiar faces, she feels a little lost and out of place.

“Are you attending?” Yes.
Or no.

Like clockwork

On Saturday I woke up knowing it wasn't coming for another day or two. I happily went about my life. Studying a bit for finals, hanging out with a friend who was visiting, drinks and jazz in the evening.

On Sunday I spent the day at home studying away like a good little child. In the back of my mind the countdown ticked on, but I typed away in a studious blaze.

On Monday I got a prick of anticipation. Any time now, I thought.

On Tuesday I waited and waited and waited. That prick turned to a stab.

I know this happens every month, but every month worry away. I start imagining the horrid scenarios. I start looking up options. I once even worked out in detail the amount of money I would need just in case. In case. Because I know the choice that I've already made. But it isn't one I want to have to put into practice. I check every couple of hours and come away with my heart heavy. I wear a morose look on my face, convinced that this is it. This is the month I've been dreading, the month I'll have to go buy a test. I've read the literature online enough times, I know it's not cause for concern this early on. I'm good about sticking to the schedule. Never more than three hours late. Like clockwork each day I reach for that little pack. And yet every last week, like clockwork again, I turn the thought over and over and over in my head.

I mention it to D, just to get him to worry. I can't be alone in this insane process. He knows I do this. He tries to comfort me. And strangely, it works. Not his words or his hugs. But the fact that I see a little doubt where there was none before. Is that wrong of me? Shouldn't I keep my neuroses to myself? But it feels better having company, doesn't it?

Wednesday morning: hallelujah! Here it is. I shake my head. Of course. Why wouldn't it be? Don't I take my precautions? Don't I know the pattern? And yet inside my head the little voice says: but you know what you'll do next month. And I know. Saturday I'll go about happy as a bee. And Tuesday I'll be Googling the closest clinics.

Carrying the Weight of the World

"The past is strapped to our backs. We do not have to see it; we can always feel it." -Mignon McLaughlin

I’ve been called negative before. A cruel jerk in middle school used to call me Daria. Occasionally I blame my parents for my glass-half-empty outlook, having grown up hearing things like, “If you keep your expectations low, you’ll never be disappointed,” “hope for the best but expect the worst,” and after a hopeful statement, “Don’t jinx it!”

So I have kept my expectations low for a lot of things, and you know what? I’ve still been disappointed. And the disappointments accumulate like a snow drift, piling on top of me, so hard and so heavy that sometimes I can’t breathe. I carry the burden with me like a pack, referencing past heartaches as reasons why I am so pessimistic now. I’m allowed to feel wounded because I am wounded.

So is it better to always hope for the best and expect things to turn out well, even if there’s a good chance they won’t? Is it better to raise up our voices in optimism and shout out what we hope will happen, regardless if fate hears it and then deems it false? I don’t know if happiness and optimism are connected. In my reassembled little heart, they never have been. But I’ve been thinking about beginning my own personal Year of Yes.

“To dance is to be yourself. Larger, more beautiful, more powerful. This is power on earth and it is yours for the taking. --Agnes de Mille

I hadn’t felt that way in a long time. The last time I could recall, it was 2003 and I was on a bus with 30 other show choir kids, all equally obsessed with musical theater. I stared up at the bright lights of Times Square, all of my 18 years of dance, theater, and music behind me, and I told myself, “I’m going to make it here.” I was naïve. I hailed from the booming metropolis of Webster, New York and I knew nothing about life in Manhattan.

But last night I remembered. The air was warm enough to leave my coat unbuttoned, revealing the faded pink straps of full body tights hanging over my khaki pants. I wanted everyone to see. I wanted anyone who wondered to know that I was going to ballet class. An eagerness hummed inside of me that hadn’t been there in five years.

“The class is in Studio 4, down the hall to your right.” I followed the girl’s directions and lost myself in the sound of tap shoes and “Hot Honey Rag,” the smell of stale sweat, the murmur of conversation highlighted with the occasional battement and echappe. I peeled off my office persona and slipped into ballet shoes crisp with years of use. My limbs ached as I stretched over, my bones cracked, and I winced at my inflexible hamstrings.

The class was ballet at its most basic, but I answered every question, raised my hand with questions of my own, and volunteered first in every exercise. I breathed through every movement, extending every gesture as if my famished body wanted to soak in every last morsel. It had been five years. I didn’t want to wait another five to feel this way again.

It’s hard to explain why I stopped dancing when I came to New York. It should’ve been the opposite. But last night, still damp with sweat from my hour and a half long return to ballet, I called my mother beneath the bright, blinking lights of Broadway. I remembered the passion and the drive and the beauty I felt before I ever lived here. “Will you send my leotards and tights?” I asked. “I’m going to need more than one.”

Progress Report

I went on one pseudo-date with the middle school boyfriend, who then told me via email a few days later that we probably shouldn't be romantic. Now that he is home, he needs me to be his only indie music listening, philosophizing "adult" friend in a sea of comforting albeit regressive personalities. Fine, the ego is bruised, but I understand.

I went on two actual dates with the guy who picked me up at a cafe, who has made a conscious effort to woo me. He is smart and interesting, and we have great conversation. Alas, he doesn't make me giddy.

And I have spent time with P, my former European bike boy now coworker. I found him the most perfect housewarming gift, and so I asked him if I could invite myself over to give it to him. "Of course. You are always welcome, especially if you come bearing gifts." I presented him with a Velveeta cookbook, and we assembled an IKEA dresser. Towards the end of the evening, he playfully tugged at the bow on my skirt and we kissed. Our first since August. We kissed again a week later, in the dark of his hallway, after an evening of party-hopping. His room now fully furnished, I laughed at him for categorizing and alphabetizing his books. Just a few days ago, he proposed soup for lunch. At a cute little restaurant down the way, sitting with our bowls of lentils in front of us, he traded me a Nepal story for one of my Moroccan ones. The next day he set off to Berlin for 10 days, but before leaving the staff lunch, he found me. We touched each other's arms goodbye.

And that night, I felt it.

A pang.

I will miss him.