It's a concept that I haven't fully grasped, as I've never really ended a relationship without leaving a vague open-ended "maybe" just hanging there, leaving the two parties no choice but a slow awkward backing away instead of a firm, solid end that pushes us in opposite directions.
It is with this in mind that I feel the need to chronicle in the most honest, raw, and true fashion possible the relationship and the girl that changed my life in more ways than I'll ever be able to list.
Lucy M-- B-- is a girl that I'll always have a soft spot for, no matter how much grief we have been through together. To this day, after nine full months of being broken up and after dating other people and doing things on our own, all it takes is a text message or a phone call to completely alter my mood for the day--be it positively or negatively. This is the final result. As for how it has gotten to this point, I'll have to go back to the beginning.
In the summer after my sophomore year in college, the illustrious University (well, illustrious to out-of-staters, "fallback school" to fellow Jerseyans), I was in a situation where for the first time in my life, I was on my own. At least for 4 days a week. See, I had taken a part-time job over the summer of 2002 at the research library at the school, where I had put in 2-3 hours a week during the semester. Because I was working there Sunday through Wednesday of each week, I had to stay at the apartment which I had signed onto with a friend from my hometown and another U student who he knew. But, being 20 year old tweeners, the majority of kids my age stayed home and worked in their hometowns for the summer, so the normally infested college town, usually swimming with early-20-somethings, was pretty much a ghost town. Add to this the fact that neither of my future roommates were moving in for a couple months and the only furniture I brought was a mattress, a patio chair, a 13-inch TV, and my desk and PC, and you could imagine how quickly the apartment became my personal fortress of solitude.
In those few months, I carved out a steady routine for myself. I'd usually wake up around 8, shower, eat a bowl of cereal, watch some World Cup footage (luckily the old resident never called Cablevision to cancel his plan, so I got to sponge off of that for the time being), walk 10 or so blocks to work, come home and make a bowl of pasta, go for a run, play on the dial-up internet, read, write, and go to sleep. Outside of work, I didn't really say more than a few words or really interact with anyone else, up until Wednesday evening, when I'd finish the day of work, and drive to the hometown for the weekly sleepovers at Eric's house and subsequent diner breakfasts on Thursday mornings. The weekend would be the time to spend with family and friends, then I'd get ready to head back to the college town to start the whole routine over again.
It was simple, and monotonous, but it was comforting. It was comforting to know just what was up ahead the next day, and the next week, and for the next two months before school started back up. I was in the best shape of my life from eating right and working out every day, I had friends I knew I could trust and count on back home, and there was little to no stress in my life on a day-to-day basis.
But it was during this time I also started to want a girl that I could talk to, maybe become interested in or even date.
See, while I was comfortable and content with my life as a between-semester college student taking time to relax and unwind, it had been a while since I had any sort of presence of a girl in my life. For my entire sophomore year, I not so much as held a girl's hand, and the few that I had any sort of interest in somehow made their way to one of my 7 male roommates' beds.
Prime example--Ag Field Day, 2002. A day where the Ag students hold family events in the daytime and get drunk and rowdy at night. It's the end of the semester, and all the boys decide to go out and hit a few parties. By some stroke of luck, I end up in a conversation with a cute trumpet player named Iris. As we get deeper in talking, I introduce her to my roommates, two of whom must've smelled blood in the water, because before I knew it, they'd jumped in and taken over the reigns. Not one to cockblock, even if I were there first, I stepped aside and vented my frustration to a friend of mine. Long story short, her and my ex-roommate ended up dating upwards of half a year, including during this summer, when I'm by myself and at the point of considering calling the girls I was friends with back in freshman year.
This is not the only time something like this happened.
So suffice it to say, I was a bit frustrated and at times I would get this feeling that I could only describe as "melancholy", though at the time I didn't know if that was a positive or negative term. Regardless, I felt like even though I was comfortable, and peaceful, there was something missing and I figured a girl was about as unobtainable as possible, especially since I didn't really interact with anyone aside from my boys and my family at the time.
But like I stated earlier, all this went away on Wednesday nights, where I'd go to the boys' place, stoop it, play some ball, watch TV, get in fights, drive around, and pretty much do random shit.
We were young kids acting young, having fun, and forgetting that there's a stressful path ahead. But even in this group of guys, the inevitable topic of girls would come up.
So with this, I made up my mind that I should start getting serious about girls. My summer of testosterone was fun, but like with everything in life, too much of something is overkill, and I needed some sort of female presence to balance things out.
Coincidentally, or possibly for the same reasons, my friend Matt had these same feelings, as he explained to me one day. When we realized that we were going through the same dilemmas, we made a sort of unofficial pact that 2002 was going to be our year, and we were going to go out and get girlfriends before we went crazy.--
---
