We're All About Each Other

My blog disappeared for while before this recent flurry of activity. For a long time I simply didn't know what to write. While I was, and still am, having an adventure, it was of a wholly different sort than those I usually include in my posts. In fact, it largely runs counter to those I usually include in my posts. Rather than cultivating my independence, it's been an adventure in allowing myself to become more dependent on anyone than I've been in a long time. In balancing wanderlust and continuity. And in being honest with my writing. Sharing this particular adventure in this forum involves deviating from my usual style and persona. That makes it harder for me. But I'm going to do it anyway, because the subject is important.

The adventure is being in love. I'm in love with Andy Ford. I've mentioned him in the blog before, but he's not yet received a proper introduction. We met at a Guerrilla Blue show in January. Jackie told me she was going to see her friend Nick Williams' band play at Big V's and urged me to come along. I did, and found myself in the dankest, sleaziest dive bar I'd ever entered. I already wrote about the craziness that ensued that evening in my The Twin Cities Music/Crazy Scene post. But I skipped over the most significant part of the evening. As we watched the band's set, I felt an uncomfortably vague sense of recognition. "The violin player looks really familiar," I commented to Jackie. "I think he might have been in some of my poli sci classes or something."

Jackie will likely tease me about this forever, but I decided to explore this suspicion when Andy came over to chat with us later that night. "I feel like I know you from somewhere," I said, unwittingly dusting off and offering the oldest pick-up line in history (I still maintain that I was being sincere). "I know, I feel the same way," Andy answered, thankfully making my clumsy stab at conversation plausible. We soon eliminated every possible way our paths could have crossed prior to that night, and moved on to the present and the future. I was still a recent repat, so I was talking about coming home and how I thought it should feel like home. What initially sparked my interest was Andy's response to this comment. "Oh, I don't think it should," he contradicted. This rare understanding of my situation caught my attention. As did his intention to go teach English in France.

We actually worked up the nerve to go on a date about a month later. After that, our relationship unfolded, I think, very quickly. But it also unfolded very naturally, with both of us seeming to mutually agree on the direction it should take without any prior arrangement or discussion. Anything that I'd been hesitant to say because I thought it was too soon proved to be a voiced reflection of something Andy was already thinking. The best example of this occurred a few months ago. I noticed I'd been silently adding "I love you" in my head whenever we said goodbye to each other, and I decided it was time to say it aloud. The first time I did, however, it was met with what seemed like an interminable and excruciating silence. My stomach dropped, and my heart started banging from anxiety rather than anticipation. When he finally returned what may have been the most significant thing I've ever said, I cried, "Why did you hesitate?!?" He explained, "I just wanted to save the moment. Because I was soooo happy you said it."

Now that we've taken that step, and many others, it's hard to believe our relationship was ever so fragile that saying something at the wrong time could have broken it. But it did start out that way. When I was perplexed about how to handle a relationship I was trying to start in England, my good friend Raf wrote to me, "New relationships are soap bubbles. Any input can and usually does pop them." Luckily Andy and I were able to avoid such fateful input. This is actually miraculous, considering all the mishaps that happened on our second date. The night was so disastrous that we were completely unable to accomplish the planned event of the evening, which was ice skating. Instead, we got lost multiple times, hit a keypad box of some sort while reversing out of an uncooperative parking ramp, lost the Subaru in a different ramp for at least 15 minutes, and struggled with a couple unexpectedly locked doors. But we survived, and even enjoyed, all that. Now it would take something very significant to rupture the bubble in which I've been living since February.

This is because of how unabashedly happy I am to be with Andy and how fortunate I feel to have met him. This is where words start to fail. Being unable to describe something in print is very odd for me, since text is usually where I am best able to say exactly what I mean. But there aren't words enough to sum up how I feel. In this instance, a glance, an expression, a vocal inflection impart so much more than anything I can type. Basically, everything seems to have a greater significance. Cooking. Driving. Sitting in silence. Going to sleep and waking up. No matter where we are or what's going on, we simply take great joy in being together. At first I worried that being in a relationship would hamper my future plans as a nomadic expat. But now I know that Andy will only encourage my adventures and enhance the wonder I see in the world.

It turns out my two types of adventures are not as disparate as I'd thought.