Digital Love

Remember how, when I first started this, I would post the song I was listening to at the time in the title?  I think I'm going to bring that back.

I've got a lot on my mind again regarding what I talked about the other day, as well as other things.

I'll start with other things this time, since I didn't even get to them as I got so focused on talking about moving.

I have this really interesting tendency to conflate things in my head and build this bubble around myself.  I can think things are really great and everything is building around itself in this awesome way, while completely ignoring everything that could be going on -- or the opposite could also be true, when I conflate everything into being negative and it's all falling apart.  I attribute this to some of my more bipolar-esque tendencies, but I think it's an easy out for the fact that, really, deep down I'm a dreamer.  I like being lost in my own head and getting everything down pat to some sort of judgment on it, screw everything else.

It's a great strength, but most of the time it's one of my biggest personal liabilities.

I went to see I Love You, Man tonight with my cousin and her girlfriend.  It was great to see them, but, as any relationship oriented movie does, it got me thinking about my own relationships and where I sit right now.

Things with Mystery Man are really not what I have been making them out to be.  Yes, it's true we're really great friends and we're very close in that sense, but that's really it.  We're not together, not really heading towards being together at this point and I've been making it into something because I wanted it to be that way so badly.  So, so badly, in fact, I was really ignoring much more of what was going on.

To be blunt, we're really good friends and we talk all the time because we're really good friends.  Nothing more than that.  I like him a great deal, but I don't think it's reciprocated in quite the same way.  I'm going to call him tomorrow and just level with him because, honestly, I think he deserves it.  I shouldn't be carrying all this around; it'll be good to be honest and I think only good can come of it.

This is going to sound really melodramatic, but I think that I really wanted it to be more than it is because of a few factors.  Firstly, the majority of my friends, and even family in my generation, are in very serious relationships.  Because I'm not in a relationship, I feel like I'm failing on some level.

Logically, I know this is a complete lie on my part.  It's a jealousy of their stability mixed with the fact that, as much as I'm sex positive, I'm not someone who just runs off and fucks random people (most usually, anyway -- I'm not the village bicycle).

Being single has allowed me to get a lot in the past year and a half I've been single.  I've, again, learned a lot about myself and I've come out stronger -- but I also think more closed.  I keep my cards pulled close because I've grown a natural distrust for people.  There are some people I've grown to trust and talk to about most anything - and I hope those people do know who they are because they mean a tremendously great deal to me.

I also think it's allowed me to become an even more honest person.  I feel as if I've changed in a lot of ways, even if they're subtle.  My friendships that I had before had gotten stronger, for the most part, and I've been able to form friendship since that time that I feel are worthwhile.  I have changed, even if I sometimes feel like the same person.

Being single has also reminded me how much a relationship can be great, but also how it can be burdensome.  I now know a crew of people who are set to make rest-of-their-life commitments to their partner of choice.  While none of them have taken the vows yet, it reminds me that I don't even have someone I'm dating, let alone living with, let alone thinking about nesting forever with.

While being awe of their ability to make this decision, I'm also downtrodden about the idea that I don't even have a potential anything about that.

And then, while all this maelstrom is swirling, I get this opportunity.  I get this opportunity to move away from everything I've ever known.  Everything I've ever loved.  Everything I've grown up in and lived in and had to call my own.

It's at once an opportunity to start myself over and new and really get myself moving.  A once in a lifetime opportunity, really.  It's also a chance for me to escape.

I've been analyzing a lot about my motives for getting out.  Some of them are pretty apparent: I'm feeling stagnant and restless with the way things have been.  I've been needing to get out of here for a long time and have been trepidacious about how to make that happen. I've been having a "change of scene" meme in my life for years -- with getting out of college, changing positions at work, moving out of the house -- and this is a rather drastic change of scene.

Others of my motives can be seen at a bit devious.  It's my chance to let go of all the chains of my older selves.  It's my chance to ESCAPE from all this shit I have up here.  It's my chance to really test my grit and see what I'm made of.  It's also my chance to really know the extent of some of my relationships.

I know deep down that a good number of my relationships with people will either immediately die off, or peter off slowly into the ether.  It happened after high school; it happened after college (even in college); it'll happen again.  It's not even so much the distance, as I've never lived or worked more than 40 minutes from where I grew up, so much as the chance in lifestyle.  Something changes in your life and you'll keep a friendship, or it'll die.

I'm honestly terrified about what I could lose by moving.  I've been thinking about it a lot in the times I'm not otherworldly excited about it.  I could, quite honestly, lose everything but my family.  I don't anticipate it happening as I have friends who are like my siblings and I love them so much it pains me to think about losing them (which is why I've been in throes of excitement and sorrow).  There are some people I, honestly, don't think I could live without their support -- Alli, Beth, Angela (as much as you may be surprised to read it), Karen even Mystery Man.

I value and love these people so very much.  We're so close and have such a bond and understanding and I'm terrified to lose that.  I don't want to move away and move away from their love.  When I think about that, I have to hold myself back from tears -- not because crying is weak, but because if it starts, they won't stop.

I've been slowly expanding the amount of people who know about this.  Only a few people have known since the real beginning of this that I'd been thinking about (I ironically say on an open blog post.. though most don't read this).  As things have become more certain and more real, I've been telling more people.

It's started as something which "would be good for me, and a great opportunity" to something which has blossomed into a whole lot more.  I'm afraid I'm bubbling about this and I'm ignoring hard facts or problems.  I've been trying to be pragmatic -- but these arrows, as I've talked about, they just keep pointing.

I'm worried about what would happen if something went wrong with my mother (someone I don't talk about very often) or Al.  I'd be 1500 miles away from them and would need to drop everything to get up here to help, if needed.  My mother is really ill with lung disease -- to the point of being on the lower side of an organ donor list.  I don't know what I would do if I was helpless to do anything from halfway across the country.  I know, intellectually, that if something did happen I wouldn't be allowed to help, but emotionally I feel like I would be letting her, and everyone else, down if I wasn't here to do something -- or try or be available to do something.  It's a real struggle for me to be in this potential for a situation of helplessness.  I feel helpless already being up here, what am I going to do when I'm half a continent away?

I know I can't tell my mother this because she doesn't want her illness to be a burden on anyone else.  My father feels the same way: I can't go too far because if something happens, I wouldn't be able to forgive myself.  He's more directly involved in everything and he would never be able to forgive himself with this huge pressure of guilt.  I would have it, too, clearly, but I don't think he'd ever be able to recover.

I don't know if I could forgive myself if I was unable to be here to help my Mom if somethind happened.  As much as I admit it sparingly, at heart, I'm a big Momma's Boy.  My mother and I are close in a way which is kind of beyond words -- we just are.  I worry about her sometimes.  She's the one I call when things all go to shit.  She's the one I call when I get really excited about something.  It's taken me years to get to this, but I've come to appreciate and love my mother as I think only a son could.

And here I am about to leave her behind when, at some point in the future, she's going to need me more than ever.

As much as I'm excited and optimistic about leaving and starting something awesome and being adventuresome and living my life to the fullest potential, I'm afraid I'm abandoning everything I've ever known and ever loved in an attempt to just scape out my stake of land.  It's this insidious thought that keeps aching inside me -- am I going because it's so great, or am I going because "the grass is always greener"?

There are a lot of pros and a lot of cons to having this huge, life-changing event happen.  The pros outnumber the cons very decently.

I also know this is a chance which will never happen again.  I also know that if I don't do this, I'll be haunted by the perpetual "what if" and it'll be one of my life's greatest regrets.

I want to die regreting the things I've done in my life; not regreting the things I wish I did.

I'm really starting to digest what I'm doing here.  I talked with Emily, my future roommate, about the logistics of my moving down there and all the shit I'd need to do.  We talked about neighborhoods, all the research I've been doing into the city, what kind of place we'd want to live in, job prospects and all of that.

We talked about the practicalities of moving Sunny down (as I'm not intent on giving the little furball up).  She told me she'd fly up and we could drive down together: me in the new car and her in a U-Haul.

We started talking about when would be a good time to move and get a place.  And while it's a comfort that it is "up to whenever's best for [me]", I still don't know when that would be.

In the past 24 hours, moving has become something that's gone from an idea on paper to something much more real.

I'm very overwhelmed, excited, exhilirated, terrified and worried.  It's such an overwhelming array of emotions that I literally have been on a knife's edge of emotion.  I've been going from totally fine to completely down to all right to really excited to incredibly sad.

I've been keeping to myself as a result, as my mood is a rollercoaster (people who follow me on twitter know it as the moodcoaster) normally -- it's been kicked into hyper drive.

This is really happening.  It's so surreal and so real.  This is so strange.