You Do You

I recently got back from visiting a very close college friend in San Antonio.  Whenever I visit her, I feel like I get all the uncertainty in my life sorted out and I have a ton of homework to make myself happier.  She is one of those people who is not content unless she is learning something new, and every time I am with her I am fascinated by all the new things she was able to soak in.  I remember in college when we were roommates I would go on and on about how much I really wanted to visit Italy.  I'm Italian, and I think I'll love it there.  One day she had enough and burst out, "Just go there! Just plan it and go!"  I was appalled.  And then I went.  I studied abroad in Florence Italy and learned to draw.

The first night immediately after I arrived we decided it would be a good idea to have a martini and catch up ... and then we had ten.  The newest thing she had learned is that ... you can live wherever you want to live.  She just decided one day she was unhappy with her environment, it was time to find a new one.  I'm not sure why I never thought of this.  If you don't like your city ... find one that has the things you like.  Cost of living, business opportunities, types of people living there, family friendly, out doorsey places, foodie towns, literally whatever you want to look for you can.  I have always pictured myself a midwestern city girl destined to be in Chicago.  But the truth is ... I hate (despite the fact that I just went out and had 10 martinis in one sitting) going out and getting "wasted".  I don't love how expensive everything is.  I hate with an undeniable passion city traffic.  I love Chicago so much, but could I find something that I love more?  Probably ... San Antonio has no traffic, everything is so cheap I felt like the richest person ever, tons of shopping, everyone is very community based, constantly full of outdoor activity.  My friend calls it "You do you."  You come here and be open and be yourself and everyone will accept you and have a good time.  Also ... The guys are different.  They open doors, they call you mam, they let you go in front of them, they get your coffee, they buy your drinks.  I love this.

It turns out, I don't have to change myself to adapt to the place that I live, I can change the place I live and be myself.  Now I have homework to research the city components that are most important to me, and perhaps I will search for an internship there.

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Spaghetti and the Black Hole of Grad School

Today I was thinking about how funny family changes over time.  My dad's family is 100% Italian.  All five brothers and one sister.  I have never experienced a more  boisterous energetic group of people as I have when the whole lot of us sit down for spaghetti dinner.  It's funny the group of us will go to extremes to have a homemade pot of spaghetti.  Somewhere along the lines, all their kids grew up (me and my cousins), and we stopped meeting several times a year.  Now for some reason, as we all get jobs and start getting in serious relationships, family becomes a priority again.  Sort of like how like when we are teenagers we rebel against our parents, then one day we become best friends again...

For my going away party I decided to try to break the habit everyone has established of dodging family party obligations.  I planned a Sunday dinner, made homemade spaghetti (three pots of the normal recipe ... ), and I invited everyone personally to come send me away to Boston.  We may all be busy, but if there is one thing we share a mutual love for ... It's relaxing, and eating spaghetti.  I wasn't really sure what I was expecting, but I was overwhelmed by how many people took time to come send me away!

I had personally emailed my aunt to make sure she knew her whole family was invited and when who I had seen earlier that week.  My cousin (her son) was preparing to go to Japan and teach English for a year.  He went in for a routine physical and the doctor discovered that he had thyroid cancer in his neck.  He immediately went through surgery and has a special diet lined up coupled with a chemo therapy treatment plan.  He turned his "Send off to Japan" party into an "I am beating cancer" celebration.  My dad, his girlfriend and I drove out and I was overwhelmed by how happy my cousins were to see me.  Why do we get so wrapped up in social obligations that we forget how important our families are?  As I was leaving, my aunt stopped me and said how happy she was that I came out.  She said that she wanted to apologize to me because she feels guilty looking back on my skiing accident recovery that she could have been there more for me.

I just started to realize how important my family is ... oddly enough just when I am moving across the country.  I'm going to make it a point to keep in touch as much as I can with my family once I am swallowed up in the black hole of graduate school.  It's so easy to take for granted the strongest support system you have!

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Growing Up

So lately I've been trying to see my family as much as I possibly can.  I've spent time with my dad, my brother, my sister, my aunts and uncles, cousins ... and just soak them up as much as possible before I leave for six months.  My mom has also been contacting me rather frequently.  She has always been a difficult person for me.  My parents divorced when I was in high school, and as soon as I was no longer legally obligated I stopped maintaining a relationship with her.  She's a person who has constantly been a struggle for me.  I remember her doing horribly manipulating things to me my entire childhood, and it was a relief to just stop talking to her once I made the decision to do so.

I remember asking her to make me breakfast when I was little and her saying "Poof!! You're breakfast!!" while she played backgammon or something of the sorts on the internet for hours on end.  I never was horribly neglected, but I would never treat my kids the way I grew up from her.  It felt like she was always using me and my life as a pawn to get things she wanted.  Like when she wanted me to live with her, she bought me new clothes, spoiled me with things she thought I wanted.  She got me dating someone who lived an hour away (close to her family) so that I would want to live by her.  I remember the exact moment I decided not to talk to her.  The boy I was dating got in trouble for selling marijuana on school property (I'm not sure what I was doing with him at the time...).  She immediately noticed that it would not look good for her to support me dating him anymore.  So she took it upon herself to call his mother and tell her that her son was requesting sexual favors from me.  WHAT?!?!?!  I realized then that she didn't care about me dating someone to make me happy, but she wanted to win a custody battle.  To be fair, I would have likely broke up with him when I realized what he was doing, I'm not an idiot, but it's a decision I should have made.  And she didn't need to call his mother and lie.

I have felt quite a bit more grown up lately, and I have been looking back on the ten years that I haven't spoken to her.  People always say things like "Oh I'm so sorry, that's so sad."  And I honestly am not bothered because I don't know what it would be like to be best friends with my mom.  I just feel like it is what it is, and I've moved on.  She has recently discovered that I'm moving and has been contacting me incessantly.  I'm not sure what compelled her after all these years, but I still have no desire to rehash something that has been closed for so long.  I just feel so much more independent now.  I haven't been under her thumb, and I love my life.

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Leaving

Today I feel like I just lost everything.  I gave up my car keys, my little sister will be driving my ladybug (my red Yaris) while I'm gone.  I also am officially no longer a resident of Chicago, and my apartment keys are gone.  I woke up early completely restless, and went for a run to clear my mind a little bit.  I hate running in the suburbs.  There's something about staring at tiny boxes all in a row with electric wires all over the place and views of grocery stores that just make it less relaxing.  I am almost always the only person out running, although I will occasionally find another woman in a matching sweatsuit walking vigorously.

The other day, as my sister and I were packing up all the final pieces from my one bedroom (which somehow filled a massive moving truck), I looked at my empty apartment and said, "I won't live in Chicago again after this." She laughed.  And then she said, "It is so hard to leave - until you leave.  And then it is the easiest goddamned thing in the world. That's a quote from John Green"

I'm not sure what I was expecting, flashing lights, dancers, sobbing friends, or what, but I thought it would be more "epic" of a moment than it was.  It really was the two of us saying "Did you get it all?" and closing the door.  And now I am here.  Ready to spend the next two weeks antagonizing my family until I move to Boston.

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He was Very Top Heavy

I am so happy right now I can't stand it.  I ran 32 miles this month, I ran 18 miles this week, and I am on target to meet my "marathon a month" goal.  This morning I ran my first race over a 5K, I ran a 10K.  I have never run six miles straight, even before the skiing accident.  I wore my medal and my race shirt all day.

At the beginning of the race (roughly 6:30 AM on a Saturday ... why do races do this to us?), my friend and I noticed a couple in front of us that was the most muscular in shape couple I'd ever seen.  She was telling me she should have trained more, and I mentioned, "I bet those two trained, they're going to kill us."  My friend and I did the first run at 12 minute mile, and then we separated.  For some reason, I became super competitive, and I just wanted open road in front of me.  I wanted to not see a herd of people, but I wanted to be first, and I ran 9 minute miles the remainder of the race.  At one point, very close to the end of the race, and for the first time I started forming thoughts other than "Pass that girl in the Ohio State Jersey...", and I noticed, I've ran 5.5 miles already.  My body became exhausted and I felt like I was going to just collapse.  I just kept saying over and over in my head, you did not run 5.5 miles to walk across the finish line.  It is roughly 5 minutes, I can do anything for 5 minutes.

Then I saw them!  The muscle couple, WALKING, exhausted on the side of the race path.  He was rubbing her back and looked like he may fall over at any moment (he was very top heavy ...) I lost all desire to walk, and I sprinted the rest of the way.  I beat them!

I never understood how amazing the feeling of training, working your ass off and being prepared can be. Time to extend this to other things in my life.  First stop graduate school.

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Chemistry and Compatibility

Not everyone wants what I want.  It's nuts.  It's a difficult concept to grasp that other people may be seeking happiness through other channels than I am!  I feel like this is a straight forward concept when your friend picks chocolate ice cream and you pick mint chocolate chip.  That's fine.  It's so confusing when they date someone you find obnoxious, or they take a job you think is stepping backwards.

My run today was consumed by a conversation with my ex who I visited in Florida.  The one I dated in college, and was flat out crazy about.  As soon as I left his car at the airport I had a message from him.

"I want you to enjoy every moment of grad school.  When you're done though, I would love to see if (maybe) we can be more than friends.  No bullshit."

After a bad bad breakup, I feel like girls always imagine this scenario.  He was horrible to me, one day realized he still had feelings for me, and I told him off!  I yelled at him, told him I was the best thing that ever happened to him, and he should be so lucky to have another chance with me!  Except I didn't tell him off.  Maybe I grew up, or maybe I'm being stupid, but I've lost the desire to yell at him.  I'd rather think through this and realize on my own if he is or isn't right for me.  I'm not sure what will happen in school or with him, but I know that I don't want to fight anymore.  It was a week long argument that almost ended the trip for me to visit him over a terrible request on my part: I asked to go to the beach.  He's so stubborn when he's decided that something will be a certain way, that there is no way to talk about it without an argument.  I'm so much happier when I'm not fighting, or when I'm not forcing someone to do something they don't want to.  Now, it's not a matter of chemistry that I'm questioning, but a matter of compatibility.  We'd go out to dinner and he will only eat the five foods that enhance his running/lifting performance.  My dad taught me "Never cheat your stomach."  We would go out for ice cream, and he'd watch me eat it.  We'd get a glass of wine and he'd have two sips.  I feel like we are so different that either he's watching me do things I enjoy or I'm watching him do things he enjoys (shop ... ).  It may have taken me two years of dating, six years without him, and one weekend of reuniting to realize that I'm not sure he's someone I want to be with.

He got upset with his ex girlfriend because she let him work all the time.  She never "pressured" him to come home or go out to dinner.  I'm at a point in my life where I don't want to have to change someone.  If you don't want to be a workaholic, stop being a workaholic.  Don't rely on someone else to find out what will make you happy and wait for them to force you to do it.  I know you can't change people, and I know I don't want to fight with anyone again as much as I did with him.  So I think I'll just have to tell him, and let it be what it is.

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Call me maybe?

Four miles again ... Owned.  I'm so strong.  I was sore the entire run, but I did it.

I've been thinking more lately about the guy I was dating for a while.  Who has gone MIA.  After I spent the night at his place, I saw him again at a friends party.  He started doing things like taking hours to answer a text and finally dropped the bomb, "Sorry, I've been really busy."  Secret code for, "I didn't want to talk to you, so I ignored you and pretended to be busy."  It seems like I haven't been able to get on the same page with guys lately.  The ones hitting on me, I'm uninterested in.  The ones I've liked, dissipated for some reason or another.

A few weeks ago, I had a friend come visit.  She started sharing pretty personal drama, and we did the adult thing and ordered two martinis.  Five martinis later, we were talking what she called "word diarrhea."  We were over sharing, and nothing was off limits.  So much so that I woke up to a message from Carlie Rae Jepson (The one I was dating and spent the night at his house) that said "What does that mean drunky?"  Awesome!  On top of drunk texting ... i have developed a new habit. When I send a message I know I won't want to see in the morning , I DELETE IT.  Apparently I had five martinis and deemed it appropriate to tell him "Call me maybe."  This is exactly the impression I wanted to make on him.   If I wasn't sure of what I needed to do before, now I was.  When I first started talking to him he was going to extremes to see me, and being really aggressive.  And now, he's too busy to return a text.

So now, I think it's time to do one of the things I wished I could do when I was dating the marine.  When I realize it's not going to work and it isn't something I want: walk away.  I deleted his phone number, and I think it's time to just let this one go.

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