What a bunch of crap.  But no, really, how do you tell someone that you wish you could be with them for the rest of your life?

Especially when you haven’t even known them for over a year.  And especially when you’ve thought you’ve felt that certain ex’s will someday turn around and be able to be that person for you, although they never do and afterwords you’re really really really glad they didn’t and know for surer than a doctor knows the human anatomy that it would have been a mistake, but you feel like it’s different this time because it’s always different “this time” whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean…but you also know that this is true.

I have a temp job interview tomorrow in the afternoon that I really don’t even want to go to.  Was that a subtle enough subject change for you?  I think it was.  But no, really, here it is way past my bedtime and ten days since I’ve seen him (not counting video chats, God bless the internet), and only four or five months into this relationship(?) and no, I’m not on the rag, but I find myself sitting on the bathroom floor, on my shaggy black Target bathroom rug, on my practically bare ass because I’m wearing a thong and didn’t want to throw shorts on just to go to my bathroom when I know my roommate is sleeping and has her own bathroom in her room and no reason to see me but the door’s closed anyway, and I’m crying because of a toothbrush.  His toothbrush.  That he left here on purpose just for me.  Because he knew I’d want it there and I didn’t even have to ask.  He just knew.  He just knew that leaving his toothbrush would comfort me before I even knew to ask him.

It reminds me of all the nights he spent here.  And the ones he didn’t, but I was okay with and not lonely because I knew he was having a good time with his friends and family, which made me happy, but also because I knew he was coming back.  If not the next night than some night after that.  But it’s eleven nights later and he’s not back.  He’s not coming back.  He didn’t go on vacation, he moved.

And I can’t be mad or bitter at him for it.  I know most of why he didn’t show excitement about it around me was because he’s not “excited” but he feels like he’s doing what he needs to to get ahead in his career field, and he sees his career is something vital to his life and his future family’s life, etc.  But I know there was a part of him that didn’t bring it up all the time, or even show the excitement he tried to hide from everyone else, even himself because he doesn’t want to lose focus, because he didn’t want to leave me.  He didn’t want to have me to have to leave me behind.  And I didn’t want to be left behind.  Again.

You see, I’ve done this long distance thing and it blows.  Especially when you’re not meant to be with a person.  Especially when they don’t try.  Especially when they hurt you before when you did live in the same area, and are too egocentric to understand how or why.  But this guy is different.  It’s always a killer when the girl says that, but I’ve double checked with friends, including the ones who would if they could jump my sexy bones, and even they agree with me that’s he is different.  Hell they even really like him.  Not the lying to me get along with him while he’s around and not say anything outright negative about him kind of like him – because I have good friends who let me know the difference, because, well, I’m a good friend and I do the same for them.  No, they like this guy too.  They like hanging out with him.  They’d hang out with him even if I wasn’t around.  They really like him.  Not just for who he is and that they just plain get along with him, but they love how he treats me and makes me feel.  Because they know it’s different.  And that’s kind of a magic about friends.  So why do I have to admit all these things in an anonymous bog instead of to them?

Well, obvious reason number one is that I’m scared.  Duh.  Being the good friends they are they also warned me about getting involved with him, since I knew from the beginning he was moving to a far off land that requires passports and the visas that aren’t everywhere I want to be, but allow people into those places.  (With or without me.)  Either way, they were right to warn me.  But even that they didn’t need to do, I already knew for myself that he was leaving.  What I didn’t know was that I would fall for him and fall hard – and he would too.

Neither of us knew.  How could we?  God or whatever divinity doesn’t hand out assignments of people you are to fall in love with like some match maker website of fate.  They just kind of come at you when you least expect it, or when you’re in no position to handle it at all.  In this day and age, being 23 is young for these kinds of life long things.  Granted, in this day and age the sanctity of marriage is disrespected by many legal heterosexual couples, but true love in other couples is denied the ceremony, promise, God’s love, and tax and legal breaks because they have the same equipment.  Nobody should be caring so much about other people’s broken promises or sexual habits unless they’re involving an unwilling party, illegal party, or actually hurting someone.  And that last one is the real doozy.  I don’t know what legal books say but how does one really define hurt?

Because he didn’t abandon me to hurt me.  He didn’t stop caring or loving me.  Or stop telling me that I’m beautiful.  He didn’t stop saying I love you and I miss you.  He didn’t stop being here for me.  He didn’t hurt me.  But it does hurt.  The hurt my friends were scared of me getting.  Because they’re good friends and they knew before I could.

And so while I keep getting the last message about anything concerning my feelings, I know why he left his toothbrush here.  I know when I told him to, without telling him.  Because the thing that makes him different is that he doesn’t make mistakes, and the one time he did, he learned to fix it.  And he didn’t repeat it when opportunity arose.  That one time I got really mad at him for some drunken alpha male behavior he doesn’t normally display, but did one night with some ol’ buddies while I DD’ed, and the next day when I told him about the embarrassment and hurt I felt and he understood, apologized for making me feel the way I did about it, but standing by the actions he knew he couldn’t take back because he knew he couldn’t take them back, he hung his head in what felt like the shame of making someone he cared so much about feel so bad, and when he left my house he took his toothbrush with him like he was defeated and knew he was never coming back.  And that was the single worse part of that one problem we’ve ever had in this short time of being together.  So, I broke up with him.  I figured I knew he was leaving anyway and it was better for us to get used it.  And it was the first time I ever did the breaking up in any of my relationships no matter how actually dysfunctional.  Because I’ve always been too scared to hurt the other person and always figured I could deal with my own emotions but I couldn’t deal with another persons’ emotions that I couldn’t control.  But this time, I thought it was the right thing to do.  And he understood.  And it was one of the hardest things I’ve done.  And he still understood.

And then I missed him more than anything.  We never broke the friendship off though.  He promised me that we’d see each other before he shipped off, even though he still wasn’t sure when that was.  I hung out with a couple of my guy friends friends, watching TV at their places cure for the lonely blues, talking about relationships (and yeah, they really liked him too) but it made me miss him more than ever.  The very next day after hanging out with one of my friends I asked the “ex” to go get sandwiches with me for lunch sometime.  When I went to pick him up I got out of my car and hugged him with my whole body.  And cried.  I held tighter to him than anything I’d cling to for life.  We got back together when I told him how much I missed him and loved him, and told him to never ever give up on me so easily by doing something like take his toothbrush home like he was so easily defeated and never coming back, even though I was just mad at first and didn’t actually break up with him when he did that.  To this day I wish I didn’t let go of that hug.  To this day, I’m still holding him that tightly.  And I’m so scared that I should be letting go.  I’m scared that I could be right in not wanting to.  I’m scared when I realize I’ve felt that previous ex’s would be hard to top although they all most definitely were (and still are being topped by this one because I’ve just never had a connection with someone like this).  I’m scared of getting in between him and his career.  I’m scared of dying old and alone, but more scared of dying with the wrong one, and even worse, knowing who the right one was.  I’m scared that this could actually be a guy that I would one day regret if I did let go.  I’m scared I’m obsessing.  Ok, I know I’m obsessing, but, still.  It’s scary.

No one ever actually knows what they’re doing.  And yes, I have been watching way too much TV involving couples getting engaged and married (the History Channel’s been kind of lame lately, it forces me to wonder down the dark lonely paths of redecoration, fashion, and yes, even wedding shows, etc).  But either on TV or even real life there’s always that notion of “you just know.”  And of course I have to be dumb and discredit my own credibility to myself, by reminding myself of all those times I spent lying to myself about wanting to be in love so much, so sure, why not, I’m in love with this (who ever) guy.  But at the same time I know, that with all those other guys, when I’m getting over them, I miss the basic things.  The things any joe-shmo could do for me, and if they don’t I could get them to start, or convince myself to change for it.  But I don’t even want to be in love right now.  And this guy left his toothbrush for me.  This guy got me the rare stuffed animal version of a Japanese puppy character no one in any Asian-town in the entire Bay Area has even heard of, for my birthday before he left.  This guy knows how to set up video chat and is excited to make time to see me, even if it’s just a few minutes over the internet.  This guy left his toothbrush.  And he’s a son of a bitch for making me want to cry almost every time I have to do something so mundane and everyday, like brush my damn teeth.

And I couldn’t love him more for it.

So I’ve realized that I can’t know for sure 100% that I want to spend the rest of my life with anyone because of personality flaws, mine or theirs, life circumstances, careers, family, school, whatever life hits you with that you can’t possibly ever know until it is too late.  And I’m always too damn pragmatic and crowd pleasing in my planning.  Whenever he used to ask me what I wanted to do on any given free day of ours, or any situation that presented us with options, I would say something along the lines of “oh, I don’t know…what do you think would be good?”  Maybe because I can be a pushover to anyone who sweeps me off my feet.  Maybe because I aim to please.  Maybe because I don’t like creating conflict even though I know there wouldn’t be argument with him because he’s so damn good at reasoning things out and finding actually fair compromises in any conflict in front of him.  But whenever we came into these decision making predicaments he would force me to find my decision making cajones so he knew what he had to work with for reasoning out that perfect comprimise and say to me: “In a hypothetical, dream-perfect, everything goes exactly the best way it possibly could situation, what would you want?”

I would want to spend the rest of my life with him.

And ever since that hug when I picked him up for make-up sandwiches, I can’t get that hypothetical, dream-perfect, everything goes exactly the best way it possibly could scenario out of my head.