Hiding the Crazy

This is one of the number one rules for meeting and hooking a guy. Hide your crazy. Every girl is crazy. I see you sitting there, thinking you are totally sane, chill and laid back. You’re not. At least not when it comes to guys. You over analyze, over sensitize and overreact. It is who we are.

At first, you think that one of the great benefits of a long distance relationship is that it is easier to hide your crazy for a much longer period of time than in a “normal” same-city relationship. The pitfall of this seemingly sweet advantage is that, when the crazy does come out, it is a bigger deal. More difficult to explain and more difficult to accept.

What drives my crazy is a twisted combination of insecurity and jealousy. There have only been a few times in the past 11 months where my crazy has popped in for a brief visit. But recently, it seems all I am is my crazy. I can’t control it, I can’t forget it; it is consuming me. Two days ago, it reared its ugly head.

I called Nick after I got back to my apartment on Tuesday night. I had been at my friend Lindsay’s apartment, eating popcorn, drinking wine, and watching Mamma Mia!. Maybe it was the wine, maybe it was the fantasies floating around my head from the completely unrealistic and perfect romantic life that is the plot of the film, maybe it was the subconscious jealousy of enjoying the company of a friend who is so lucky that she gets to live with her boyfriend. Whatever the reason, the second that Nick started talking about his end of camp (he is a camp counselor in the summer. The standard summer job for the perpetual student) party, I started losing it.

“How are you getting home?” I asked. The first burst of my burgeoning crazy: asking questions in a short manner with a twang of attitude.

“Well, I’ll probably just sleep over.”

“Oh,” was my only response.

“Oh great, here we go…” he said.

And here it went.

My jealousy is not the typical jealousy. Or, at least I don’t think it is. My jealousy does not stem from being worried that Nick will be unfaithful. I am jealous of all the people who get to hang out with him whenever they want, and here I am, 300+ miles away, spending my nights without him. I miss him.

I’ve pinpointed the two reasons (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!) why my crazy has conquered my rational self so incessantly lately. Reason one: it wasn’t until recently that Nick actually had a life. I know, that sounds kind of harsh. Harsh, but true. The beauty of dating a graduate student is that they spend the vast majority of their time locked away, sitting in a dusty library, completely alone. At first I thought it was strange, “Why doesn’t he have any friends?” And now, the friends are out in full force and all I want is for them to disappear again.

“What can I do to help you get over this?” Nick asked me. He always asks how he can help.

“I don’t know” I sputtered out through teary  sniffles (heck yes I was crying. I’m an emotional person).

And that is just what I told Nick. I told him this is who I am. I am emotional and  I can’t hold it back.

“I know you are. And that is what I love about you. You are almost too human,” he told me.

What can send an already emotional person over the edge of the crazy cliff? Stress. That is Reason Two. I am not happy at my job, I am moving home to save money so that if and when I get a job in DC I will have the money to move, and I am in the middle of job hunting. I am ready to move. I cannot wait to move. But I have to wait and waiting is making it even harder. Then Nick hit the insecurity side of the crazy right on it’s head.

“Are you worried that if this whole process takes too long that you are going to lose me?” Nick asked.

“Maybe? A little.”

“But I’m here. I am here and I am waiting for you.”

By the end of our two hour cell phone rendez-vous the crazy had calmed. I locked it back inside and resolved to handle these situations, that I know will come up again, differently. But, then I logged onto The Facebook this morning and saw a bunch of posts from his friends making plans to see each other. I felt the bubble burst, and the crazy rising.

When We Met

I knew he was coming before I met him.

I mean, I knew he existed before I met him.

We were driving somewhere, me and my friend Rachel, and she started telling me about these guys she recently met in Baltimore. He brought her to a party that his friends were having. He was there. She gushed to me how she went with this one guy but then was more attracted to him. Getting into more detail, she divulged information about what he was writing his dissertation on. A light turned on in my head. I knew this dissertation. He was about to be awarded one of my fellowships. I chuckled and mentioned to Rachel that I knew of his work.

Fast forward 5 months.

The first time we met we were in Saint Louis, Missouri. Why on earth would we ever be there?

Two words: fellowship workshop.

One feeling: torture.

In a hotel nestled under the famous Saint Louis Arch we had our first encounter. I didn’t notice him when he walked in. It wasn’t until he was standing in front of me, I was working behind the registration table, and he said, “Hi I’m Nick”, that I realized who he was. I glanced up quickly to survey the scene. He looked a bit nerdy, as most of the fellows did, with his glasses, a bit of a scrawny build, and a decidedly Jewish vibe.  As I passed him his workshop materials, I quipped a quick story about how we both know Rachel, my only intention was to make a quick connection with someone in a room full of 80 strangers. He engaged with me, with a look of boredom scarred on his face, for about 30 seconds and then left me in his dust.

The phrase “douche bag” popped into my head.

With the workshop over I flew back to New York looking forward to the beginning of a fabulous city summer with my friends and my Albanian immigrant boyfriend (yes, he sounded like Borat). Most weekends were spent sun bathing in Brighton Beach and nights were spent dancing at clubs. A truly typical young New York summer. I didn’t think about Nick once. Not even a passing thought.

In September of 2008 I found myself in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Yet another fellowship workshop. Yet again, 5 days of torture. And, yet again, Nick was there. Wednesday night came and went, as did Thursday. But then, Friday came strutting in. I was sitting at the hotel bar, drinking a vodka gimlet and smoking a cigarette. I had been at the Milwaukee Zoo earlier in the day, one of the most depressing zoos I’ve ever been to, and was longing to be back in New York. A voice broke the static in my head, calling my name. I looked to my right, and there was Nick, drinking a draft beer, just three bar stools away. Small talk ensued.

We continued to chat, I have no memory what we talked about but what I do remember is that he asked what my plans were for that night. I mentioned that I had to go to a dinner with some senior faculty members who were attending the workshop. He asked for my number, “Maybe we can meet up later?” and I left to get ready for dinner.

Before dinner was over, I got the first of the thousands of texts I would eventually receive from him. “Where are you?” was all it said. “Still at dinner,” I responded, “I’ll call when we get back to the hotel.” And I did call. I was going to a small lounge (which means a bar with couches and low tables in Milwaukee) a few blocks from the hotel with another group of fellows. He was already out at a different bar. I arrived at the bar, settled into one of the  couches and ordered a drink. Ten minutes later, Nick walked in. He was alone. He left the bar, where the rest of his cohort was, and came here. Still, I thought nothing of it. The night shuffled forward, everyone’s brains wrestling with the combination of booze and intellectual chatter, laughter and cigarette smoke filled the room. The bulk of the laughter was being generated by me and Nick.

We stood in the elevator together. The only two, around midnight on Friday night. I half expected him to kiss me. He didn’t. He got off on 7, and I exhaled.

Saturday night marked the final night of the workshop and the last time I would see the fellows in an organized, work-related setting. The fellowship program was throwing a party at the Rock Bottom Brewery on the canal. I was sitting at the bar, sipping on a glass of red wine (it was early, I would later be throwing back Long Island Iced Teas), and talking with two female fellows, Orion and Rebecca. I had noticed Nick was sitting at a table about 15 feet behind us. Rebecca was scanning the crowd, making clever social commentaries, and suddenly lowered her voice and whispered, “Nick has been constantly looking over here. I think he might be interested in you, Orion.” My heart dropped for a split second. Of course he would be interested in Orion. She was a gorgeous Iranian woman, a published poet, had an MD and was one of the most promising PhD candidates in the room; she was bound to become a super-star.

Intimated by the supposed affection Nick felt towards Orion, I got up, explaining that I was going to play a game of darts, and disappeared into a small room where the dart boards were. Nick followed behind me. My heart jumped back up. We played a few rounds of darts but soon the party began to dwindle. One fellow, a fabulous young gay Puerto Rican named Fredo, suggested we all go to a club 10 blocks away. About 20 of us started walking. It wasn’t until we got there that we all realized Fredo had brought us to a gay dance club. Having been drinking for the past three hours, no one seemed to mind and we quickly dominated the dance floor. Nick gravitated towards me and we danced to dance remixed pop songs for about two hours. Out of, what seemed like, nowhere, he kissed me on the dance floor and then asked “Do you want to go back to the hotel?” “Yes,” I gasped desperately.

We spent our first night together. We stayed up all night alternating between having intense sex and even more intense conversations.. We got to know each other in every way. At 7 am on Sunday morning, I had to get ready to work. He left the room and I missed him immediately. That day we were all flying to our respective homes. By some stroke of luck, our departure gates were right next to each other. We snuck away, separately, so as not to be discovered, and continued to talk until our flights boarded but made no plans to see each other again.

Sunday night I got my second text from Nick, “I had a really great time with you this weekend.”

Monday morning I sent my second text to Nick, “Is it weird that you were the first thing I thought of when I woke up?”

His response? “Absolutely not.”

How We Got Here

I am 24 years old. A woman. A girl. An adult. A child. A pessimist. An optimist. Totally secure. Incredibly insecure. I change my mind constantly but there is one thing I know for sure … I’m moving.

My goal in writing this blog is to chronicle my life as I transition from New York City to Washington D.C. and uncover how I got here, why I got here, and what it means for the future. I am 100% pretending that I know what I’m doing. This is an experiment of the heart and the mind.

I have been having a love affair with New York City for the past two years but it is coming to an end in 27 days.  We’ve had our ups and downs, I’ve lived up and down, and now, I’m giving it up and moving down. I am leaving New York for another man. A man who lives in the DC Metro Area (cue gasping young female 20-somethings exclaiming that I shouldn’t uproot my life for a man). If I look back on my life over the past two years, I recall a time when I thought I would never leave New York. I day dreamed ways to maintain a family and still afford to live in New York. I couldn’t imagine leaving the slew of friends I had stationed in New York. I am the first to admit that if it wasn’t for this man, I would never leave this city. I know everything has changed because of him.

And, I’m glad.