Audi!!

Every day when I come to work, my destination is a college campus. *My* college campus. A place where I spent considerably more years than I ought've and wasted far too much of my parents hard-earned income than they, or frankly I, ever should have allowed. A place where, in spite of my entirely non-illustrious academic career and the passage of more than ten years since I last set foot in a classroom for official academic-pursuit-related purposes, its near impossible for me gaze upon any single building, tree, squirrel or other landmark of either the flora or fauna variety and not immediately be transported to a time and place just as vivid now it was so many years ago. Memories are funny that way.

Because of where my office is located, I don't get out much. More often than not, in fact, it takes a meeting in someone else's building for me to get up off my lazy ass and stroll to the heart of campus. Yet every time I do, I'm reminded precisely why the work I do here is so important, so meaningful, so impactful. And how lucky I am to have had the opportunity.

Today was one of those days. Now, to be factually accurate, instead of a meeting it was really lunch at the school's art museum and instead of walking, I actually drove to the parking lot behind the building where they filmed that scene in Animal House with the horse in the President's office...

...but emotions flooded me all the same.

For about 93% of the past eight months (with the exception of three weeks in April and a few sketchy days back there in January) I've been one half of what probably could be considered one of the better relationships of the modern online dating era. Almost in spite of the distance between us, we've managed to make this thing work. Well.

And in about three weeks, we'll be neighbors.

No, I don't have a job.
And no, I don't technically even have an apartment.
And no, I'm not living with him.

As I got out of my car this afternoon, en route to my lunch date, I was struck with an intensity of a sentiment that I haven't felt since one particular day in 1996 when I jubilantly strode across a makeshift stage erected on the covered tennis courts, shook hands with some old dude I'd never met, and claimed my blank diploma.

I felt an overwhelming affection for my surroundings, tempered by a peculiar twinge of regret...not because I lack even the slightest degree of confidence in my decision, or because my unflinching certainty that this is the right choice happened to be wavering...but because I simply don't want to leave this place.

On the precipice of a bit of a breakdown but attempting valiantly to keep it together, I noticed a figure approaching from the right. It was an elderly man, and as he passed me, his determined stride belied his dour expression. In his left hand he carried two roses. Two artificial-orange-sorbet-colored, grocery store specimens wrapped in clear cellophane. The kind with the faux white piping across the top. As if that makes it look fancier or something.

Then the tears came.

In just a few weeks, M3 and I are going to give this relationship thing a go.

For reals.

We'll have lunch together. Like, whenever we want.
I'll learn what he's like after a trying and frustrating day.
He'll discover that sometimes, for dinner, I'll eat eight pieces of fruit, a string cheese, and four popsicles. And then two more. You know, for dessert.
And how, when I'm sick, I only consume food out of teeny tiny ceramic ramekins.
And occasionally he'll turn on my TV and realize that five minutes before he came over, I was watching a Real World marathon or the Three's Company True Hollywood Story. Again.
And I'll see him on Tuesdays.
And he'll see me on Thursdays.
And every other day of the week, too. If we want. But if we don't want, that's okay, too.
Time simply won't matter anymore. Because we'll finally have enough of it.
Sundays will transcend their current status as the most suck-ass day of the week and reclaim their prior standing as just another weekend day.
He'll meet more of my friends. And likewise.
And sharing him with the world will become, after an extended and draining and seemingly interminable delay, nothing but joyful. No longer something I'm afraid to admit I more than occasionally resent because our hours together seem always to be in such short supply.

There's no moral to this story, no witty punchline or amusing note on which to end this admittedly rather unimpressive missive. And there's certainly still no promise of happily ever after.

Call me crazy, but given the myriad reasons (real or imagined) why we probably shouldn't even have made it this far, and how frequently over the past week I've found myself stumbling to find just the right words to express how excited I am for whatever comes next...

I think I'm pretty okay with happily for now.