After ™ last flew up to Illinois to spend a long weekend with me between her birthday and my own, I reminded her at the airport that the following three weeks until I saw her again would go by pretty fast. I had been saying it primarily to comfort her that unlike, say, the more than two months before that visit when we'd last been able to see one another, this final step was going to arrive much faster. And sure enough, before I knew it—before I'd even remembered to formally change my address, before I'd been able to land a job to start when I arrived, before I'd finished packing ALL of my belongings—I was at O'Hare on May 18 boarding a one-way flight to Texas.
We first moved ™'s stuff from the Houston area to our new apartment in Austin, and then the following day began the roughly 19-hour drive back to St. Charles. While the original plan was to drive as much as we could on the first day and find a hotel when we got tired, we instead ended up stopping for a bite to eat in Memphis that evening and just staying on the road until we arrived at my parents' house early that Saturday morning. After catching some shuteye, we had some rather lackluster Pizza Hut for dinner that evening with my parents and my aunt and uncle. Later that night, we went out with a couple friends of mine in downtown St. Charles.
Over the course of those three weeks between ™'s visits, I kept waiting for the moment that the relocation was really going to hit me. But even as I reminded myself that certain visits I was making could be my last for quite some time, it still didn't seem real.
What stuck with me that last night in St. Charles had to be a moment outside one of the bars just after last call. ™ was hugging me and a girl I'd never met before but was was apparently a friend of one of my friends looked at us and wondered aloud to us why she couldn't have something like ™ and I had. The girl, probably somewhere in her mid-twenties, had just gotten out of a long-distance relationship.
When other friends and co-workers used words like "jealous" or such in response to learning my relocation plans, I had sort of downplayed it as them just being nice. But on that last night, something in that one girl's eyes finally made me feel lucky. After three or so years of convincing myself nobody else in their right mind would ever want to be in my shoes, I finally experienced a real moment of having somebody else saying they wanted what I had.
Ultimately, I was only beginning to realize how lucky I was.
™ and I had debated whether the drive was really a good idea or not. The original plan had involved using her grandparents' Suburban to haul down all of my stuff. But as gas prices rose and the actual amount of possessions I'd be transporting proved not to be all that significant, we switched the vehicle to one of her aunt's Volkswagen station wagons. And then after a little more concern about costs, we finally agreed to just see how much we could cram into ™'s Prius.
One of the biggest dilemmas had to be that, as had been the story since I met ™, I was still without a driver's license. Thus, ™ would be forced to do all of the driving.
But with the sun setting after leaving Memphis on the way up and the time in the driver's seat beginning to take its toll on ™'s back, we agreed that there was little harm in letting me take the wheel of the Prius for a few miles. As long as I didn't go over the speed limit, what could go wrong?
Initially, I was a bit edgy as we crossed the Illinois border into Cairo, but we arrived back in St. Charles without any issues. Memphis aside, the drive up hadn't been terribly scenic, so we planned a return route that would take us through the Ozarks. And since there had been no issues when I drove on the way up, I once again agreed to take a few more turns at the wheel on the drive back down.
We had passed through Dallas that second night of the return drive (we actually prearranged a cheap hotel stay midway through) and were roughly an hour away from finally getting to our apartment when we passed by yet another Texas bubble gum machine. It pulled out after we passed, causing ™ to sit up and panic a bit. But I reasoned that the cruise control was set below the speed limit, so certainly he couldn't be after us.
Could he?
When the cop's lights began swirling behind us and remained swirling behind us after I pulled over, the Prius already crammed with everything that I owned (and hadn't given to Goodwill) was now filled with panic. We momentarily toyed with the idea of switching seats, but before we knew it, the officer was over at ™'s window asking for both of our licenses.
Seeing as I didn't have one of those, I simply produced my brand-spanking-new Illinois state ID and began internally rehearsing how I might pretend to have accidentally forgotten my driver's license. ™ was already asking why we had been pulled over, with the cop explaining the Prius' light over the license plate was out, but I could feel the sweat beginning to form all over me.
I was shaking my head, trying my hardest not to burst into tears. ™ had asked multiple times if I had wanted her to take over the wheel after we'd gotten into Texas, and for some reason I insisted that I had things under control. But nothing could have been further from the truth.
I pictured the first phone call to my parents being made not from the friendly confines of a new apartment, but a cold and sterile jail cell. Would I have to find a new lawyer? Would I be in trouble with two states? Would I be sent back to Illinois?
And then the officer reappeared at ™'s window.
"There's your license," he said. I assumed he was talking to ™, and thought surely the next words out of his mouth would be something along the lines of, "But as for you sir ..."
Instead, I looked over and saw it was actually my state ID he was offering through the window.
I was speechless. ™ stepped out of the vehicle to be shown the particular light issue, and I began wondering how in the world I got so lucky. Did the cop just not notice? Were out-of-state licenses really that hard to check? Was he—as ™ occasionally likes to put it—not getting enough oxygen to the brain?
In the end, it obviously didn't matter. I had just dodged the biggest bullet of my life, and I was once again reminded of my good fortune.
Just as I had tried to tell myself to anticipate, the first bills, groceries and other necessities have gobbled up much money right away. However, because ™ is a former culinary major and can seemingly whip up an infinite number of meals so effortlessly, I no longer find myself spending the daily 10 to 20 bucks dining out. And what she makes is always better than what I would've paid for anyway.
I'm trying not to let the return to the job hunt stress me out too much; I've only been physically applying to places for a little over a week now, after all (it took an additional week just to get everything unpacked and organized). This was to be expected, I tell myself.
But once I get back to work, wherever it may be, I imagine that then everything will really sink in. Last week, I experienced a different kind of moment though.
™ and I had gone over to the pool late one evening, and both the water and the air outside that evening were a little too chilly for my enjoyment. But as I looked at our apartment complex lit up around us at night, it felt like the type of view I'd seen from pools at hotels during vacations as a kid.
At times, that's still what it feels like right now: I'm merely on an extended break of some sort and sooner or later I'm going to have to return to that basement and dead-end job in the 'burbs of Chicago. Too often this life I'm leading now almost seems too good to be true, and as a result, I worry about a looming bitch-slap from reality. I'm not used to things going this well.
But as I type this, preparing to go hand in the latest round of applications tomorrow, I know that whatever troubles I might be having now are only temporary. As long as I continue to do the work of looking work, everything will sort itself out.
For the time being however, whether it's getting into bed each night beside ™ or waking up to her presenting me with a big cup of coffee while I pick up the daily newspaper right on our doorstep, I am reminded on a daily basis of how lucky I truly am.
We first moved ™'s stuff from the Houston area to our new apartment in Austin, and then the following day began the roughly 19-hour drive back to St. Charles. While the original plan was to drive as much as we could on the first day and find a hotel when we got tired, we instead ended up stopping for a bite to eat in Memphis that evening and just staying on the road until we arrived at my parents' house early that Saturday morning. After catching some shuteye, we had some rather lackluster Pizza Hut for dinner that evening with my parents and my aunt and uncle. Later that night, we went out with a couple friends of mine in downtown St. Charles.
Over the course of those three weeks between ™'s visits, I kept waiting for the moment that the relocation was really going to hit me. But even as I reminded myself that certain visits I was making could be my last for quite some time, it still didn't seem real.
What stuck with me that last night in St. Charles had to be a moment outside one of the bars just after last call. ™ was hugging me and a girl I'd never met before but was was apparently a friend of one of my friends looked at us and wondered aloud to us why she couldn't have something like ™ and I had. The girl, probably somewhere in her mid-twenties, had just gotten out of a long-distance relationship.
When other friends and co-workers used words like "jealous" or such in response to learning my relocation plans, I had sort of downplayed it as them just being nice. But on that last night, something in that one girl's eyes finally made me feel lucky. After three or so years of convincing myself nobody else in their right mind would ever want to be in my shoes, I finally experienced a real moment of having somebody else saying they wanted what I had.
Ultimately, I was only beginning to realize how lucky I was.
™ and I had debated whether the drive was really a good idea or not. The original plan had involved using her grandparents' Suburban to haul down all of my stuff. But as gas prices rose and the actual amount of possessions I'd be transporting proved not to be all that significant, we switched the vehicle to one of her aunt's Volkswagen station wagons. And then after a little more concern about costs, we finally agreed to just see how much we could cram into ™'s Prius.
One of the biggest dilemmas had to be that, as had been the story since I met ™, I was still without a driver's license. Thus, ™ would be forced to do all of the driving.
But with the sun setting after leaving Memphis on the way up and the time in the driver's seat beginning to take its toll on ™'s back, we agreed that there was little harm in letting me take the wheel of the Prius for a few miles. As long as I didn't go over the speed limit, what could go wrong?
Initially, I was a bit edgy as we crossed the Illinois border into Cairo, but we arrived back in St. Charles without any issues. Memphis aside, the drive up hadn't been terribly scenic, so we planned a return route that would take us through the Ozarks. And since there had been no issues when I drove on the way up, I once again agreed to take a few more turns at the wheel on the drive back down.
We had passed through Dallas that second night of the return drive (we actually prearranged a cheap hotel stay midway through) and were roughly an hour away from finally getting to our apartment when we passed by yet another Texas bubble gum machine. It pulled out after we passed, causing ™ to sit up and panic a bit. But I reasoned that the cruise control was set below the speed limit, so certainly he couldn't be after us.
Could he?
When the cop's lights began swirling behind us and remained swirling behind us after I pulled over, the Prius already crammed with everything that I owned (and hadn't given to Goodwill) was now filled with panic. We momentarily toyed with the idea of switching seats, but before we knew it, the officer was over at ™'s window asking for both of our licenses.
Seeing as I didn't have one of those, I simply produced my brand-spanking-new Illinois state ID and began internally rehearsing how I might pretend to have accidentally forgotten my driver's license. ™ was already asking why we had been pulled over, with the cop explaining the Prius' light over the license plate was out, but I could feel the sweat beginning to form all over me.
I was shaking my head, trying my hardest not to burst into tears. ™ had asked multiple times if I had wanted her to take over the wheel after we'd gotten into Texas, and for some reason I insisted that I had things under control. But nothing could have been further from the truth.
I pictured the first phone call to my parents being made not from the friendly confines of a new apartment, but a cold and sterile jail cell. Would I have to find a new lawyer? Would I be in trouble with two states? Would I be sent back to Illinois?
And then the officer reappeared at ™'s window.
"There's your license," he said. I assumed he was talking to ™, and thought surely the next words out of his mouth would be something along the lines of, "But as for you sir ..."
Instead, I looked over and saw it was actually my state ID he was offering through the window.
I was speechless. ™ stepped out of the vehicle to be shown the particular light issue, and I began wondering how in the world I got so lucky. Did the cop just not notice? Were out-of-state licenses really that hard to check? Was he—as ™ occasionally likes to put it—not getting enough oxygen to the brain?
In the end, it obviously didn't matter. I had just dodged the biggest bullet of my life, and I was once again reminded of my good fortune.
Just as I had tried to tell myself to anticipate, the first bills, groceries and other necessities have gobbled up much money right away. However, because ™ is a former culinary major and can seemingly whip up an infinite number of meals so effortlessly, I no longer find myself spending the daily 10 to 20 bucks dining out. And what she makes is always better than what I would've paid for anyway.
I'm trying not to let the return to the job hunt stress me out too much; I've only been physically applying to places for a little over a week now, after all (it took an additional week just to get everything unpacked and organized). This was to be expected, I tell myself.
But once I get back to work, wherever it may be, I imagine that then everything will really sink in. Last week, I experienced a different kind of moment though.
™ and I had gone over to the pool late one evening, and both the water and the air outside that evening were a little too chilly for my enjoyment. But as I looked at our apartment complex lit up around us at night, it felt like the type of view I'd seen from pools at hotels during vacations as a kid.
At times, that's still what it feels like right now: I'm merely on an extended break of some sort and sooner or later I'm going to have to return to that basement and dead-end job in the 'burbs of Chicago. Too often this life I'm leading now almost seems too good to be true, and as a result, I worry about a looming bitch-slap from reality. I'm not used to things going this well.
But as I type this, preparing to go hand in the latest round of applications tomorrow, I know that whatever troubles I might be having now are only temporary. As long as I continue to do the work of looking work, everything will sort itself out.
For the time being however, whether it's getting into bed each night beside ™ or waking up to her presenting me with a big cup of coffee while I pick up the daily newspaper right on our doorstep, I am reminded on a daily basis of how lucky I truly am.
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