Single Girl in the Suburbs

No longer single or in the suburbs

It’s been a long time. But each time I sat down to write, I didn’t know what was going on in my own head, so putting it to words was nearly impossible. Just logging on to Tumblr made my head spin, the idea that it was closer to having to explain how I felt. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. A lot has changed.

So here is what happened. 

Earlier this month, I packed up all my worldly belongings and I moved. I’m no longer in the suburbs. I’m happily residing in a city again. Where I take public transportation and carry my groceries home and my only dinner options late at night aren’t Applebees and Ruby Tuesdays. I no longer have only one bar like in TinyTown with a last call before 10 p.m. There are people and culture and a nightlife. 

It seemed to take a little more to make the move this time. Last time I had a boyfriend to help. This time I was all on my own. It was a little scarier coming to a new city than I expected. But I made it through. And it’s a great life less.

And this week another big chapter turned. The Super Ex became the Boyfriend. It’s Facebook official and everything. 

After nearly two months of talking on the phone and being petrified to tell him how I feel, I finally broached the subject. But before I could spill out my soul, he bared his. 

“I want to be with you,” he said. 

It was something I only ever imagined in my day dreams that I would hear. But he said it. And I said the same. So we’re giving it a try. It’s not perfect, there are still hundreds of miles in between us. But we’re going to work at it. I am optimistic.

One of my new roommates shared an African proverb with me. It translated to something along the lines, “When you send wood to fire a second time, it burns easier.”

I think it’s true. There is something comfortable about trying this again. It’s like putting on a sweater you’ve kept in storage all summer. It still fits just perfectly. It still provides that same warmth. And while you know the wool itches a little, you already use to it.

So this is the end of my little blogging experience. It’s time to put down the keyboard and stop over analyzing and just let life happen. It’s been fun. And thank you to everyone who shared laughs and lamentations with me. 

I suck

I know I’ve been horribly MIA recently. My whole life is changing and I’m not sure how to explain it all. 

I took a new job and a big piece of this blog is about to be irrelevant. I will no longer be the single girl in the suburbs, I’ll be the emotionally-attached-to-my-ex girl in the city. And that’s just a lame blog name.

I’m considering swapping out my posts of bad online dating messages with ridiculous specifications in Craigslist roommate ads. I’ve decided that looking for a roommate online is way more high-stakes than online dating. And I thought online dating was being happily married with two kids with a picket fence vs. being lonely forever. Finding a roommate is a matter of how much money I’m going to have to spend on new shoes. Much more important. 

And on the being lonely forever front, I’m in total schizo mode. 

I’m quickly realizing that having the Super Ex back in my life isn’t a problem when I’m talking to the Super Ex, which we tend to do at in two-hour phone call periods. The problem comes all the time in between. My brain is generally doing one of two things. I’m either picturing the ways that fate will work out and we’ll live happily ever after together. Or I’m obsessing about the fact that I haven’t talked to him in [two hours/two days/a week] and that means he’s given up on me forever. 

I always thought my fantasies about him were idle day dreams. For three years those idle day dreams were crazy scenarios where we ended up in the same city and had passionate sex all night and I told him I loved him all these years. For three years those were just crazy day dreams. Until they came true, minus the me telling him I love him part. So now my crazy day dreams carry more credence, since the last one pretty much became reality. It wasn’t helped by the fact that he casually mentioned in conversation the other night that he’s been applying to jobs in the city where I’m moving. 

For the past few weeks, trying to sort all that out in my head has made it impossible to compose a blog post.

I suck at articulating how I feel when it really matters. 

singlesecrets asked: How are you and how is everything going with the super ex? I miss your posts!

Things are, well complicated. It’s been a totally crazy couple of weeks, and I feel like my whole life has been turned upside down. I’m still trying to parse it all out, and at this point, I don’t really know how to feel about everything, which is making writing a blog post damn near impossible. I start writing, but I can never get too far. 

Sorry about being MIA. 

The Super Ex has reminded me why it didn’t work, not through words, really, but actions. And in the process he’s made me question my own decisions and why I’m really single. I’m about to take a new job and uproot my whole life again.

I’m not really sure what to make of it all. But as soon as I can formulate sentences, I’ll give a more complete update. 

When it rains, it pours

I feel like my whole life is in flux right now. I had everything figured out: my job, my social life, my love life, even if it was virtually non-existent. I had finally found comfort in singleness and stopped freaking out about not having a date on a Saturday night. I love my job. I’ve made great friends around Tiny Town.

Then everything blows up. 

I’m possibly looking a new job, upending everything and moving and I can’t stop thinking about the Super Ex. Why can’t things just be simple?

I’m in so much trouble

Just got off the phone with the Super Ex. (I need to come up with a better nickname.) We were talking for more than two hours. I’m not really sure how we manage to talk that long, but we do.

Of course, not about anything important or of consequence or how we feel or what we’re doing. We talk about politics and old times and television and the things that make us laugh. He makes me laugh.

I’m in so much trouble. I don’t know where this is going, but I’m both giddy and afraid. 

I was afraid I was going to cry

I was afraid I was going to cry when I saw him. I didn’t. I was afraid I was going to cry when he kissed me. I didn’t. I was afraid I was going to cry when we made love. I didn’t. I was afraid I was going to cry when we said good bye in the morning. I didn’t. 

But as I got on to the plane to come back, I sat down and put my headphones in my ears and listened to one of the many songs that makes me think of him and the tears started flowing. I was a little drunk, having had two daiquiris before boarding the plane. And I felt a little silly with the hood of my jacket pulled up and my head against the plane window. I didn’t really try to stop them. They were the silent kind of hot tears that you only know are coming because they burn your face.

I have everything else I’ve worked for in life. My career is awesome. I’m getting job offers from bigger companies. I’m in the middle of one of the most awesome projects in my field. I live on my own. I make enough money to support my lifestyle. I jet around the country. But there I was getting on a plane and I felt like I was leaving everything that mattered most.

For three years I’ve thought about what I would tell him if I saw him again. In my head I’ve gone over it a million times. But the words couldn’t come. “I love you.” I couldn’t make them come of my mouth. As we were lying in bed with his arms wrapped around me and the sound of us breathing filling the room, I was screaming them in my head. Somehow hoping that if I thought them enough he would know. He would sense it. Maybe he did.

We were lying in bed, our clothes strewn all over the place. We hadn’t been together for three and half years but everything clicked like nothing had happened.

“It doesn’t seem like that long ago we were here,” he said as I nestled my head against his chest, the first post-coital words. 

“Sometimes it seems like forever,” I replied.

We went to dinner first. We talked about what is going on in our lives. We laughed about the times we had together, the good and the bad. We talked about our careers and where they are going. Within the first five minutes of sitting down we were already bantering like there hadn’t been an eon of silence between us.

The sex was amazing. It always is with him. But it wasn’t just sex. There was that feeling of yearning. That feeling that you just can’t control yourself. The explosion of looking in each others eyes and knowing that it runs deeper.

It keep telling myself these aren’t things I could imagine. This isn’t some one-sided love affair I’m making up in my own head. When I started to wake up in the morning and he reached over and pulled me closer to him, it wasn’t just because I happened to be there. It was because he wanted me to be closer.

We’ve never been good at communicating. There was a period we fought a lot. And only in the middle of a screaming session would we say what we really thought. And then there was a period we didn’t fight at all, but we left the delicate subjects of love and lives together alone. We knew that if we tried to cross that bridge it wouldn’t go well. We knew that there aren’t right answers.

He’s got a set of goals. I’ve got my own. The geographic ties of those keep us apart. When he moved away the first time, I would to get in my car at night after work and drive around to have the few minutes of the day alone. It was a time I could reflect. And I use to listen to this song by Sugarland called “Want To.” There is a line that goes, “Yeah, we’ve both got dreams/We could chase alone/Or we could make our own.” We could make our own. But neither of us is willing to ask the other to give them up.

We were lying in bed and I admitted I had deleted his number from my phone years ago.

“You were drunk one night and thought, I hate this asshole and deleted my number?” he joked. 

“No, I was drunk one night and afraid I was going to drunk dial you and say something stupid,” I responded.

“You always could have called me,” he said, the tone changing to serious.

“I miss you,” I answered.

“I miss you too,” he said. 

I think I had hoped we would go to dinner and the spark that was there years ago would have faded. It would make me realize I’ve been pining over something that doesn’t exist any longer. Then I hoped we would have sex and he would get up and leave like he use to sometimes when we were younger. It would have broken me for the last time and I could have moved on. But he didn’t. He stayed holding me as long as he could. 

So now what am I left with? A renewed sense of hope and a heart that could break even more. I’m afraid I’m not done crying. 

I am freaking the F&@!< out

Remember when I wrote earlier this week that I was going to be on the road for work? Remember how I said I was going to be in the same city as the Super Ex? Remember how I said I wished that he would notice on Facebook I was coming and call me? Remember how that sounded kind of pathetic and crazy because I haven’t spoken to the man in three years? 

Holy fuck, as I was getting on a plane this morning he messaged me on Facebook. He wants to get a drink and “catch up.” I said yes.

I’m freaking out. Like big time. My hands were shaking as I responded. I might have dropped dead from shock right there in LAX. I think I had to actually stifle a verbal reaction in the middle of the terminal. 

An hour later, I’m still freaking out. I don’t know what to make of this. 

I’ve written very little about the Super Ex. We met in college. We started dating at the beginning of my junior year, which was his last semester as he was a fifth year senior. It was a tumultuous semester. We would break up and get in big screaming fights and then a few weeks later we would get back together. He had some serious commitment issues. I was crazy about him. We were both crazy.

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On the road again

Life has been totally stressful crazy the past week. The whole premise of my blog could be shattered, and not because I’ve found a relationship. I might potentially have to make giant life decisions in short order I was not prepared to make right now. And work has been crazy busy. 

Now I’m out on the road traveling for business. It’s going to be a hectic, sleepless week. (Every flight I get on I hope I’ll end up next to a cute single guy. It never happens.) And it’s going to land me in the city where the SuperEx lives, or at least last I heard he lived there, he could have moved. It’s been more than three years since we really spoke to each other.

I’ve been thinking about the SuperEx a lot lately. I’m not really sure what set it off, but he’s sort of been a menace in my thoughts. I little piece of me wishes he would see that I’m in town on Facebook and call. But I know he won’t. And if he did I’m not sure it would be the best thing to see him anyway. So I won’t even day dream. Or I’ll try not to.