The following was said by a friend of mine, but it might as well have come out of my own mouth:
…I’d say that, by and large, pretty much everything in my life is going according to plan, save for this delay in grad school, but nothing bad about that…
…and that I’ve worked to get the things I’ve wanted over the last few years and I’m rather content with where I am right now. The one thing that’s missing is, of course, the obvious. So I told myself I should do something to remedy my female-partner-deprived life over these next few months when I have some free time…
…but then I realized this isn’t a set of hot deals on computer components or a diploma…I can’t “work” on this.
And hell if I know where to even look in my current vicinity. Sadly I tell myself that I must wait, I cannot force anything out of nothing.
It just got me thinking. I told him that in some way, it’s a self-defeating attitude to have. You can wait and wait and wait; fate might work out your way, but it might not. Certainly if you were hoping to find someone where meeting them might come more naturally, such as during our four years of college, that had a slim chance of coming true; Cooper doesn’t exactly boast a wide and varied female population. But there was the possibility of the future. You were young enough to feel that you had your whole life ahead of you.
Now, though, when you make your way out into the world, the opportunities to meet people with little effort exerted become slimmer and slimmer. It’s up to you to create the opportunities. If you don’t do something about it, you might find yourself suddenly transported back to an eighth grade school dance, where you found yourself without a dancing partner as everyone started pairing off around you.
But it’s not time to worry just yet. There’s a trend towards getting married later in life, so there’s still hope–although I have a feeling that that doesn’t hold true back in the Midwest. And when you go off to grad school, there’s the chance that someone might just be impressed enough by your age and status as a grad student that she might say yes when you ask her out. From that point, though, it’s up to you to make something of it.
Me, I don’t worry, or at least I don’t worry yet.
I’ll tell you what I do think about, though. There’s a wall that I’ve built up–I can blame it on living in New York, but if you like, I’ll attribute it to other things–such that I’ve forgotten about love and its manifestations. Every so often, though, I’ll be reminded of something good about it; I’ll think of a moment that sums up the rewards of having someone that you care deeply about.
The most vivid image I have in my mind is of a time that I visited an old high school friend of mine, perhaps nine months ago. She was kind enough to host me in her dorm room (if I’m not mistaken, I’m still on her list-of-people-it’s-OK-to-give-keys-to), and though she was extremely busy with work and stayed up nights to finish it, she did come back to her room early in the morning to rest for a few hours.
I woke up one morning to find her in bed, asleep. The sun had risen and was gradually brightening up the small room, casting its golden rays over her as she slept. Bathed in that light, she was the apotheosis of an image of peace. I could not help but gaze upon her, feeling the need to watch over her, protect her. Alas, she was not mine to protect.
It’s the little things like that that remind me of what it was like to be intimately close with someone. And I miss that feeling.
