Sunday, February 06, 2005
Amongst a crowd of stars
I've never had a girl cry over me right in front of me before. Well, maybe that's not true, but certainly not to the degree that I experienced this weekend.
Despite the fact that I usually avoid going home during a semester, I drove home on Friday. I drove home to say goodbye to my Liz, who gets on a plane bound for Australia. It was a gluttonous weekend in terms of food consumption: Thursday night I ate at O'Charley's with Kimmie, Mike, Kyle, and Matt, and then Friday night I had Italian with Liz and my parents, Saturday night to an Australian grill with Liz and her family, and then this morning brunch at an Indian restaurant.
I digress, I went back to see Liz, who has been the light of my life for the past two months. One might think that this doesn't allot much time for relationship growth, but Liz and I have been friends for six years.
I have tried to remain fairly logical when it comes to relationships, at least when I realized that some tough decisions would need to be made regarding graduate school. When Liz and I got together, it was understood that even if we got past her 5 month stay in Australia, things would become nigh impossible as she would return just a month or two before I leave for graduate school.
I plan for my time at Oxford (or wherever I end up) to be a new beginning. It's going to require more serious work than I have ever performed before, and I intend to take it on without distractions. That means no blogging (except for maybe the Demographer), no AIM, and no computer games. It's a 9 month MSc course in Development Economics. I see it as being the springboard for an international career.
Because of this, I know it makes much more sense to leave for graduate school alone. Thus we had already made the decision to "end" things this weekend. Easier said than done. Liz and I didn't really talk about it until Saturday night. She was giving in to her heart, and I was giving in to my brain. I'm afraid that I was too insistent in that we remain on course, and she started crying. Not being able to deal with the fact that I might have hurt her, I held her close and cried too.
And so from midnight on, we cried, we argued, we accused, and we cried some more. I promised her I would write, and would not try to suppress feelings, but rather let them go where they pleased, but I still warned that the end result would probably be the same: Next semester I'll be gone. We fell asleep curled up together.
I said goodbye to her on the steps of a palace. Well rather, The Palace Theater, but that hardly sounds romantic. She was looking just as gorgeous as the day I told her how I felt. A rash that had been attributed to my goatee-induced abrasion had now faded, apparently the result of using the wrong kind of toothpaste, much to my relief.
The goodbye was short by our standards, I turned away and jumped in the car my mom had parked on the curb, looked briefly back, then was whisked away. Again I am alone, ready to finish off this semester in style, but not as happy as I could have been, with my Liz. What I have left is her gift to me: a compass carried by a US soldier through WWI, and a star in the sky named after the brief moment that we shared.
Whether or not the heart and brain will come to a compromise someday remains to be seen.
Despite the fact that I usually avoid going home during a semester, I drove home on Friday. I drove home to say goodbye to my Liz, who gets on a plane bound for Australia. It was a gluttonous weekend in terms of food consumption: Thursday night I ate at O'Charley's with Kimmie, Mike, Kyle, and Matt, and then Friday night I had Italian with Liz and my parents, Saturday night to an Australian grill with Liz and her family, and then this morning brunch at an Indian restaurant.
I digress, I went back to see Liz, who has been the light of my life for the past two months. One might think that this doesn't allot much time for relationship growth, but Liz and I have been friends for six years.
I have tried to remain fairly logical when it comes to relationships, at least when I realized that some tough decisions would need to be made regarding graduate school. When Liz and I got together, it was understood that even if we got past her 5 month stay in Australia, things would become nigh impossible as she would return just a month or two before I leave for graduate school.
I plan for my time at Oxford (or wherever I end up) to be a new beginning. It's going to require more serious work than I have ever performed before, and I intend to take it on without distractions. That means no blogging (except for maybe the Demographer), no AIM, and no computer games. It's a 9 month MSc course in Development Economics. I see it as being the springboard for an international career.
Because of this, I know it makes much more sense to leave for graduate school alone. Thus we had already made the decision to "end" things this weekend. Easier said than done. Liz and I didn't really talk about it until Saturday night. She was giving in to her heart, and I was giving in to my brain. I'm afraid that I was too insistent in that we remain on course, and she started crying. Not being able to deal with the fact that I might have hurt her, I held her close and cried too.
And so from midnight on, we cried, we argued, we accused, and we cried some more. I promised her I would write, and would not try to suppress feelings, but rather let them go where they pleased, but I still warned that the end result would probably be the same: Next semester I'll be gone. We fell asleep curled up together.
I said goodbye to her on the steps of a palace. Well rather, The Palace Theater, but that hardly sounds romantic. She was looking just as gorgeous as the day I told her how I felt. A rash that had been attributed to my goatee-induced abrasion had now faded, apparently the result of using the wrong kind of toothpaste, much to my relief.
The goodbye was short by our standards, I turned away and jumped in the car my mom had parked on the curb, looked briefly back, then was whisked away. Again I am alone, ready to finish off this semester in style, but not as happy as I could have been, with my Liz. What I have left is her gift to me: a compass carried by a US soldier through WWI, and a star in the sky named after the brief moment that we shared.
Whether or not the heart and brain will come to a compromise someday remains to be seen.
