A Girl...

Like Gold to Airy Thinness Beat

For the last week or so I've felt like my center of gravity has shifted. Just like the compass in John Donne's "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" (go here for an adequate explanation of the poem, paying special attention to the last three stanzas (romantic and dirty!)), I feel like I'm leaning away from my fixed point, my nucleus, listing in the direction of a certain someone.

Since first moving to Berkeley in the summer of 2001, I have lived, worked, shopped, dined, gone to the movies, and worked out within the same ten-block radius. Everything I needed (save Krispy Kreme, In-n-Out, and Trader Joe's) was within a fifteen-minute walk of my apartment, and although I've explored the Bay Area by car perhaps more thoroughly than many lifelong residents, my homebase was always Berkeley proper, in the shadow of the campus' campanile.

Now, however, with the love of my life* newly moved into an apartment in Oakland, I don't feel quite at home anywhere. My stuff and my cat are in one place; everything else is where he is, 7.46 miles away according to MapQuest. Thing is, he's closer now than he's ever been, so there's hardly room for complaint. And yet I'd be lying if I didn't admit to feeling a little homesick lately, although for what home I can't exactly say. When we're at my place, we're cramped and the shower sucks. When we're at his place, I can't go five minutes without imagining my bookcase and tv and framed photos filling the few remaining empty spaces. Half of my shoes already litter his bedroom floor, but I want the other half there too.

The good news is that he's happy to have me invade his space. He wants me there, and I feel comfortable and accepted in his home, but even though I am his most welcome guest, I am still and will remain for some time a guest. That makes me feel a little sad. Because I want our physical proximity to mirror our emotional proximity.

But don't get me wrong--I don't want to move in with him tomorrow or anything. (I mean, I would in a heartbeat if he asked me, but that's not how it needs to happen.) I just want to know when. When when when?! Because I can continue living out of my backpack for six months, but not for a year. This may sound like a minor thing for those of you who don't depend on stability and routine and "the plan," but for me it's tremendously stressful to not know where I'm sleeping each night and to have to schedule visits to my cat and decide each morning whether or not I need to take my laptop and blowdrier and makeup bag and clean clothes to work because I don't know where I'll be sleeping on any given night. Short of loading a shopping cart two by two, I don't know how to do this my place/his place thing very well. It just doesn't make sense to my brain and doesn't feel quite right to my heart that we spend every evening together yet continue to pay separate rent and waste gobs of time packing overnight bags and driving twenty minutes to one or the other locale. Things could just be so much easier...

And I feel bad for even bringing this up--not only to you guys but to him--because I have absolutely nothing to complain about. Simon is the most wonderful person I've ever met in my entire life and he has done nothing but make me feel welcome in his home and his life. This "problem" is only 50 percent about our situation, and the rest is about my having once lived with someone who always kept one foot in the proverbial doorway in case he needed to make a quick getaway. Thus it is that whenever I sense a hint of Simon's preferring to be alone rather than with me (and the crazy thing is that this hasn't even really happened yet! I'm just bracing for when it happens in the future because I'm INSANE), I get all weird and self-pitying, and that's no good, not for me, not for him, and not for us. Because if ever a girl felt the most loved and the most secure in her relationship, I am that girl. I have no doubts, not even a little tiny seed of one. And perhaps that's part of the issue--if I know something will happen eventually, I can't help wanting to get there ASAP; I don't really enjoy anticipation, I'd rather just get to it already. That's neither here nor there--it's just different from how he operates.

As if I haven't already said more than enough, let me use an example that does not come from my own experience but is nevertheless apt. Let's say there's a relationship in which one person wants to have sex a lot and the other person doesn't. Instead of compromising--one person has less than he prefers, one person has more than she prefers-- what always ends up happening is that the person who wants to have it less gets her way because, being the equivalent of the "lowest common denominator," she gets to set the pace. And while that makes her happy, that makes her partner miserable. But is that better or worse than a compromise in which both parties give a little? Is it better to have one person content and the other dissatisfied or to have two people who are equally dissatisfied? I don't know. Well, I think my current situation is a bit like that. Whereas I'd like some sort of indication about when I can stop packing an overnight bag every single day, Simon wants to just go with the flow and let things happen when they happen. And I get that and respect it, I really do. Yet while I certainly don't want to force anything or turn into a woman obsessed with a timeline, I can't be completely happy just floating around, anchored to nothing. That's not the type of person I am. But is it wrong to ask him to lay some vague plans with me, or is that outside the realms of acceptable compromise?

I don't even think I'm looking for an answer from you, Internets. Because while this Leah Has a Boyfriend thing is all new to you and you probably want to take me by the shoulders and shake me hard because I'm talking about "the future" with some guy you think I just met and hardly know, please remember that you don't know the whole story. A few little detail nuggets for you: 1. When we switched over to our new computers on Monday, I transfered almost 800 emails that have passed between me and Simon. 2. A big part of why he moved to his new place was so he could be with me. So I hope you don't misunderstand and think I'm totally out of my mind about this stuff. Simon and I have talked about the future, we are deeply committed to each other, and although we're realistic about the possibilities of things going sour, we are confident that this is going to work out just the way we dream it will.

Simon, baby, I don't need to move in with you right now. But I want to feel like we are both working toward it, meaning one of us isn't quite so content with what is quickly becoming the status quo: "Your place or mine?" Does that make sense? I know you're excited about your new place and having the kind of space you've never had, and I know you like me there and want me there, but please, if you can, shift your point of view and join me in looking at this as temporary. Enjoy the hell out of it, and I will too, but let this be a transition and not The Way It Shall Be Indefinitely Amen. I don't want to wait and wait and wait and wait until some outside force initiates a change or you are overcome with a sense of readiness that falls lightly on your shoulders from the ether. I want you to be happy, but I want to be happy too, and the best thing I can do to swing the latter right now is just to ask for what I need. No outrageous demands, no manipulating or whining or pouting, just me asking for a compromise. Six months? Nine months? A year? Should I buy an extra blowdrier and two winter jackets and two boxes of granola bars and should I get a new bureau for my bedroom and fix my place up or just leave it alone because I'll be out of there sooner rather than later? Jeez, why do I have to get so mental and anal about everything when you have been nothing less than a prince?

Let's just say this is a public service announcement to all you guys and girls who have ever felt this way. Because Simon and I don't really have a problem on our hands, here. What we have is a girl who just wants to weave her life more completely with her boy's. And considering that the boy wants that too--just not right now--means that this is a "problem" borne not of dissatisfaction or feelings of inadequacy or insecurity or neglect, but borne of mutual love and desire and goopy, smooshy adoration. I adore the hell out of you, baby, and will wait as long as I need to; just don't expect me to smile through the whole separation, however long it may last, because there's always something missing when you're not next to me.