diane leaves for home tomorrow.
After that she will be back in Rochester for a night and then she’s off to grad school. She’s entering into an intense period. She’ll spend the next 10 months or so working on her thesis paper and final project for Carnage Mellon University’s Interaction Design program.
Cliff’s Notes Version of our Relationship
I’ve known Di for a year and half now. We met while we were both working on a production of Arthur Miller’s The American Clock for RIT. We started to date shortly after that. Di and I have spent the time between then and now doing a lot of growing together. Let’s just say she’s a little bit country and I’m a little bit rock and roll. Di’s gotten a lot more spontaneous and I’ve started to get better at planning and organization.
About four months after we starting dating Di left for CMU (located in beautiful Pittsburgh). We made the decision that we’d give a long distance relationship a go (I already had some experience in this, just ask Julia. [Digression 1: Pretty much every girl I’ve dated has up and left town on me… it’s probably time I change my deodorant or something…]). So we both got very familiar with the drive between here and the city of rivers.
This summer
As her first year at CMU wrapped up we made the decision that she’d come to Rochester and live with me for the summer. I, in general, am not too keen with the idea of living with someone for extended periods. Don’t get me wrong, I want to do it eventually, but I also think that it presents a lot of problems (and have seen it cause many friends their fair share of grief). But we both knew that we needed to do it because it was a cheap way for Diane to live here and we needed to be in the same place for an extended period of time so we could work on our relationship.
So this summer represented the first time in five years I’d lived with someone else for an extended period (and the first time ever that person was from the opposite sex… ‘cept mom of course). And we both had a lot of adjustments to make. Some we did fine on… others, well….
All and all it’s been a wonderful summer. But over the course of it things changed. And we’ve hit a bit of a milestone [Digression 2: I hate it when there is perfect word to describe a situation and I just can’t find it. I know it is there, just floating around in my head and I just can’t grab it. The worst part is I know tonight at about 2.00am [Digression 3: I guess that’s really tomorrow isn’t it?] I’ll wake up and have it. That happened once with the title of a Van Damme movie. There is nothing worse for a guy to wake up thinking about the Muscles from Brussels, uggg. [Digression 4: My waking up thinking of Jean Claude has nothing to do with my current situation, I swear!]] and we’ve found ourselves (note for readers: I’m back at the milestone thing) more best friends than dating. That, coupled with Diane’s workload and my plans to go to grad school, have led us to where we are today.
In the last few days we’ve made the decision that we’re… hmmm I’m still not sure how to describe it… we’ve not quite broken up but we’re not really seeing each other any more either. I mean we’re still planning visits (just a lot less frequently, to give Di more time to work on her thesis). But they’re more to see a friend than a girl/boyfriend. I guess we’re both still wrestling with what that means (Which I think is why I’m writing this. I’ve been trying to lay this out everyway I can to try and wrap my head around it). Bottom line, just like everyone else, we’re going to take this one-day at a time and see where we end up. We’ll just be taking days a lot differently than we did before.
Perhaps the best way to describe it is that our relationship is in Purgatory. Over the next year we’ll see if we can find enough Indulgences to work out way out.
I’ll keep you posted as to what happens next. On a far lighter note:
Tina has a great blog up on sex tips.