In general, I try to be all light-hearted and ho ho ho over here, because I feel that people would rather read about fun times than serious times. Also, usually when I find myself being overly earnest in real life, I immediately feel embarrassed that I have just vomited my feeeeeelings all over some poor unsuspecting person. I don't want to do that all over the internet, where there's a permanent record of it that the CIA can catalog and add to your permanent record anytime they like. But hey! What the hell! Sometimes you just have to throw caution to the wind, especially when you can't think of anything else to write about on your silly little blog, and your imaginary audience is constantly glaring at you and wondering why you even bothered to come out of the dark backwaters of xanga if you didn't have anything good to say anyway.
What was I talking about? Oh yeah, serious business. This week's (month's?) serious business is relationships, specifically the future of. This may surprise you, reader, but I have this thing. This thing where I like to feel like I'm in control of my life. I like to know what's going to happen, when, and why, and what I can do about it. I like to know what and who I can depend on, and what and who I can't. I like to be able to plan for things, prepare for things, map them out and make an itinerary. This makes me feel like things are going to be ok. Nothing can go wrong if I have a plan, because the universe will see my plan and obey it.
The problem is that even the simplest plans depend on other people, and other people are often just blatantly uncooperative. Why people don't understand that they must follow my plan first and theirs second, I will never know. This whole thing gets particularly sticky when your life is all entangled with someone else's. I guess you see where I'm going with this.
I tend to take romantic relationships pretty seriously. I've never dated someone without being pretty firmly sure that I could hang out with them long-term. I just don't have the kind of 'que sera, sera' temperament that I think you have to have in order to casually date. When you're always looking forward, trying to plan your life, it gets kind of confusing not knowing who will be there and who won't. This has come up in a pretty infuriating way in the past month or so, since I'm gearing up for another major stage of my life. Up until now, I had a 2-year plan: live in Winston, work at this job, apply to grad school. Now I'm working on a fresh 5-year plan: move to a new town, go to grad school... and that's as far as I've gotten. Grad school is squared away (for the most part - I still haven't officially accepted, because I've still got to go for my grand visit and all), but that's about it. I'm trying to imagine what the next 5 years will look like, because that's how I prepare for major changes, but I'm having trouble. Where will my significant other (you know, old whats-his-face) be for all this? He's done with his higher education at the end of next year, leaving me locked in to my thing for 4 more years while he does... what? I have no idea. Will he move to another city? Another state? Will we see each other more often, or less than ever? Will we break up? Will we get married? If we got married, when would that happen? How could we ever get married if we're going to be spending 4 years in different states? What's the point of continuing a relationship under those circumstances? If we break up, what will it be like being single again, looking for a new sugar daddy in the world of social work? Are there even any men in the field of social work? (Quick internet research confirms that yes, there are men in the field, but there are only 4 of them and 3 of them are middle-aged and married already.) If I'm not dating a successful lawyer, then who will support my unprofitable idealistic whims?
I HATE not knowing. The urge to just KNOW, just so I can feel secure in the knowledge that I know what's in store for me sometimes makes me think crazy things, like: well, he's probably going to move to another state, and we'll never make it through that, so we might as well just go ahead and break up. And I know it's the crazy that makes it sound like a good idea to end a relationship that you're perfectly happy with, and so I remind myself that it's the crazy talking, but then I'm left with... what? The feeling that I just have to wait and see. That I might be investing all this time and energy into something that will just crash and burn, but maybe not until I'm 30 years old and THEN what will I do?
Then I have moments where I go in the complete opposite direction, moments that I'm even more embarrassed by, when I start thinking, you know, maybe you're just a little too independent. If you're this worried about it, maybe it makes sense to act more conservatively. Just do a 2 year Master's program and then you'll be able to stop and see where your relationsihp is before committing to a longer term PhD. Do you really want to sabotage a great relationship by unflexibly sticking to your own goals when you know it could mean the end of a beautiful thing? Would it kill you to compromise a little?
I hate thinking this way. I know deep down that I would never forgive myself if I gave up the chance to go to a great PhD program just because of some guy. Maybe it's a mistake, but I deeply believe that I shouldn't have to compromise my dreams to make a relationship work. I also know that, in reality, all relationships are an investment, and you hope it doesn't fail, but there's always the chance that it will. It's not that I'm some kind of insecure nutjob that's just in a hurry to get a ring on her finger, no matter what the circumstances. It's just that I hate feeling like I'm over here happily plugging away at something when I have no idea what the end result will be. Like maybe I'm involved in the relationship equivalent of that first scene of a scary movie, where everything is bright and sunshine-y and people are going about their daily business to the tune of a cheerful soundtrack, but it's painfully ominous because as the viewer you know damn good and well that this is the last time the sun will shine for the entire movie.
And in spite of my certainty that I have to follow my dreams, come what may, I'm still terrified that one day I'll look back and realize that things might have worked out differently if I'd been a little more willing to slow down and take a detour in the name of love. But if I'm honest with myself, I know that Lee would never allow me to do something like that anyway, and I guess that's Real Love, right there: pushing someone to be who they are, regardless of the consequences.
/serious
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