Free Bird
It's over. I knew it was going to be, I'm the one who ended it, and somehow it still comes as a shock.
We'd been together for exactly 1 year, 5 months, 1 week and 5 days. We met during a summer theatre production. My sister complained every night about her dance partner until she realized he had read HHGG. She introduced us, astonished that two Douglas Adams fans existed in one cast, and we immediately fell into flurried conversation. He wrote and I edited, which worked out perfectly, we read the same books, shared a twisted, intellectual sense of humor. Five months after we met, we started officially dating, to the relief of most of our friends.
From March through the summer, it was pretty storybook. We had enough inside jokes to talk for twenty minutes without saying something anyone else would understand, took ballroom dance lessons with retired couples, and generally were inseparable. When I went off to college in Pennsylvania, we decided to try out a long-distance relationship, just until fall break six weeks later. This got pushed to Thanksgiving, then Christmas. He visited me once in the spring, but more importantly we still talked at length about everything I'd never been able to talk to other people about without feeling like I had to watch every word. I get a lot of flak about the fact that I have a good vocabulary and use it. It's not like I'm an intellectual snob--far from it--but the fact remains that words like 'vernacular' are in my, well, vernacular. I loved connecting with someone without hearing not mean-spirited but still grating comments like "...In English?" "Translation please?" "Once more, without the SAT words?" He understood both my language and the fact that I didn't use it to show off. By the end of my freshman year, we were still together. A year younger, he'd just been accepted to his first choice college(as well as all the others).
Shortly before I left for Nain, though, I started feeling a little uncomfortable with the relationship dynamics. It was unbalanced all of a sudden. He told me constantly how inspiring I was, both in going to Nain and in general, but for the first time I couldn't think of something that impressed me as much. Suddenly I felt like a mentor with a promising student---I knew he could do amazing things, but it was like he was waiting to follow my lead. I shrugged it off the first time, but it continued, and I realized I'd taken steps towards maturity that he just hadn't reached yet. There isn't anything wrong with it, he's a wonderful guy and people grow up in their own time, but I had to decide whether to hang around in hopes that he'd hit an emotional growth spurt soon, or leave something that had been great in hopes that what I'd find single would be worth it. Not an easy choice. But after weeks of weighing both sides and dozens of pages scribbled in my personal notebook, it was pretty clear.
I hate saying 'broke up,' because he is one of my greatest friends and I want him in my life, but tonight I told him that I want to take the romance out of our relationship officially. I was(am) so nervous. Part of me feels like this is a terrible mistake. How many times is it possible to find someone so compatible? It hasn't even hit really, not on an emotional level. There's a difference between wanting to change it to just friends and realizing it's over. I'm reminding myself that I wasn't really happy these last two months, barely missed him through six weeks in Canada. I had a decision to make, but now I feel heavy and sick at heart, and all I can do right now is hope I did this right.
Free Bird (by Lynyrd Skynyrd)
If I leave here tomorrow
Would you still remember me?
For I must be travelling on, now,
There's too many places I haven't seen
And if I stayed here with you, now
Things just wouldn't be the same
Well I'm as free as a bird now,
And a bird you can not change.
And a bird you can not change.
And a bird you can not change.
Lord knows I can't change
Bye, bye, its been a sweet love.
And though this feeling I can't change.
Please don't take it badly,
The Lord knows I'm to blame.
And, if I stayed here with you now
Things just wouldn't be the same.
For I'm as free as a bird now,
And this bird you'll never change.
And the bird you can not change.
And the bird you can not change.
Lord knows, I can't change.
Lord help me, I can't change.