See You Later.
We both knew this day would come. Although heavily anticipated, this morning snuck up on both of us. It was about 4:15 am, she, her roommate, and I sleepily made a group effort to see her off and get her to the airport. The first part of her journey was taking her away from us to Boston. She's staying there for a few days, then she'll be down in Florida to spend a little bit of time with her parents. After that, shes's off to Costa Rica for a while. How long is a while? Well, it could be about 9 months, could be a little bit longer.
I spent a whole summer falling in love against the rules.
I fooled around and caught feelings for a friend. Was it that spring fever? Naw. Monica is amazing. Our 3-year friendship was one of straight up mutual respect. She was my homie. There were no Sunday fun days with Monica and Laura. The real funny part about it was that we'd never hung out alone more than 4 times. Somewhere along the line we started texting each other, checking in on each other, doing the elevated friend level stuff. I didn't even know what I was doing (as is usual, oblivious is my state of mind). I told our mutual friends what was happening and I was told that I should not say anything. It wasn't worth the time to go and jeopardize a good friendship with my "feels". Behind the scenes, it turns out that she was feeling similarly. I have my friends Beth and Nicky to thank for me finding out such things. They wing ma'amed me hard. The feelings were discussed and a kiss was had. This. Just. Got. Interesting.
The original arrangement was that there were no desires for anything more than just hanging out. Neither one of us wanted anything and it made no sense to have anything go down because of course, someone had decided to move out to Costa Rica for a while to teach English. So on top of all this, it was cool for us to hang out. No use for getting close when that was on the horizon, right? That message was loud and clear. So much so, that after things seemed to be heading in a direction that was leading us to get too close, it was decided that we should stop and go back to being friends. Of course, I didn't like this idea and I had to pause my side of the friendship piece. I had already caught the feels and couldn't really go back. Crazily enough, through a series of "real talk" sessions, we both realized that the feelings there were too real to ignore and the possibility for something amazing was too enticing.
This led to a situation where we pretty much saw each other every day. We got closer and closer, eventually realizing that there was more than just a passing fancy there. Against the previous odds, we decided to try a relationship (which was basically what we were doing right from the beginning, even if we didn't want to admit it to ourselves). Things from there were LOVELY.
All this time, there was that ticking time bomb of this trip to Costa Rica. This was eased by the idea that there were so many good times shared. First official dates, trips out of town, quality moments filled with magic and hope. Conversations about why this was a good thing for her floated around and made lots of sense.
The only problem was that I wasn't ready for the goodbye. I thought that I was prepared for all this fun business to just transition from holding hands and kisses to skype and phone calls. I thought that I was mentally prepared for making things happen on our own terms. We got this and it's going to be hard, but we got each other #teamwork! The idea seemed so solid and workable.
Then she looked me in the eyes, with tears in hers. There was no level of preparedness to be had for that goodbye. That look in her face, the goodbye kiss, the hug, the "I love you". That business snuck up on me and floored me. We're going to rock this out. That's the plan...
That's what happens with surprises. You get the chance to make the best of them.
I spent a whole summer falling in love against the rules.
I fooled around and caught feelings for a friend. Was it that spring fever? Naw. Monica is amazing. Our 3-year friendship was one of straight up mutual respect. She was my homie. There were no Sunday fun days with Monica and Laura. The real funny part about it was that we'd never hung out alone more than 4 times. Somewhere along the line we started texting each other, checking in on each other, doing the elevated friend level stuff. I didn't even know what I was doing (as is usual, oblivious is my state of mind). I told our mutual friends what was happening and I was told that I should not say anything. It wasn't worth the time to go and jeopardize a good friendship with my "feels". Behind the scenes, it turns out that she was feeling similarly. I have my friends Beth and Nicky to thank for me finding out such things. They wing ma'amed me hard. The feelings were discussed and a kiss was had. This. Just. Got. Interesting.
The original arrangement was that there were no desires for anything more than just hanging out. Neither one of us wanted anything and it made no sense to have anything go down because of course, someone had decided to move out to Costa Rica for a while to teach English. So on top of all this, it was cool for us to hang out. No use for getting close when that was on the horizon, right? That message was loud and clear. So much so, that after things seemed to be heading in a direction that was leading us to get too close, it was decided that we should stop and go back to being friends. Of course, I didn't like this idea and I had to pause my side of the friendship piece. I had already caught the feels and couldn't really go back. Crazily enough, through a series of "real talk" sessions, we both realized that the feelings there were too real to ignore and the possibility for something amazing was too enticing.
This led to a situation where we pretty much saw each other every day. We got closer and closer, eventually realizing that there was more than just a passing fancy there. Against the previous odds, we decided to try a relationship (which was basically what we were doing right from the beginning, even if we didn't want to admit it to ourselves). Things from there were LOVELY.
All this time, there was that ticking time bomb of this trip to Costa Rica. This was eased by the idea that there were so many good times shared. First official dates, trips out of town, quality moments filled with magic and hope. Conversations about why this was a good thing for her floated around and made lots of sense.
The only problem was that I wasn't ready for the goodbye. I thought that I was prepared for all this fun business to just transition from holding hands and kisses to skype and phone calls. I thought that I was mentally prepared for making things happen on our own terms. We got this and it's going to be hard, but we got each other #teamwork! The idea seemed so solid and workable.
Then she looked me in the eyes, with tears in hers. There was no level of preparedness to be had for that goodbye. That look in her face, the goodbye kiss, the hug, the "I love you". That business snuck up on me and floored me. We're going to rock this out. That's the plan...
That's what happens with surprises. You get the chance to make the best of them.