Things started happening quickly in late August.  I met the rest of the first year class and signed up for classes.  I added everyone on facebook because I've become rather obsessed with it as a communication tool as well as a photograph archive.  I introduced myself to professors and began making friends.  I labeled everyone for convenience and modified the labels as I gathered new information.  I found that a DDR club was already in existence and happily joined it.  I attended the day where all the clubs are available to learn about and sign up for and got myself wrapped up in a roleplaying game club that has proven quite enjoyable.  I made even more new friends.  I interviewed all the professors and their research groups and am still trying to figure out whose would be best to join.  It's all been quite enjoyable and hectic.

We made one last (shall I say desperate) pilgrimage after a summer of simply interacting over the internet with her to see if she was still even interested in hanging out with us in person.  We ran the trianglular path through all our old home towns and stayed all day with our old friends which ended in us getting drunk at her apartment and having to say the night.  I can't say that it was on purpose, but looking back I can't say that I tried not to get drunk so that I could drive home later.  Everything seemed fantastic.  She talked with us, joked with us, was playful with us.  She even rested her head on my shoulder as we sat together on the couch and in my drunken stupor I could barely keep myself from wrapping my arms around her and squeezing her with all my might.  It seemed like the idea of being with us had finally taken and she was suddenly interested.  I feel asleep happily on her couch with the pillow she had given me under my head after an absolutely fabulous night hanging out with all my favorite people.

I woke up the next morning with a headache (I only had two beers and a bit of tequila...) and ended up cleaning up the party before anyone else woke up.  Finally someone woke up, that someone being our friend J who had also slept over with one of the girls A who also lives in the apartment (They are dating and two of our best friends ever!) and I asked him if I could take a shower because I always feel dirty after drinking.  After the shower he came out and we all chatted for a bit until A woke up and thanked me for cleaning up the mess.  I personally think if you get super drunk somewhere and stay the night you are almost required to clean up the mess on principle.  Anyway, we were about to leave when finally she comes out of her bedroom in her little pajamas and says a proper goodbye.  I thought everything was fantastic as we shut the door behind us.

Unfortunately I had drawn the wrong conclusion, just like one always draws with women.  They are tricky things and their actions don't mean the same thing universally like those of men.  Apparently, laying her head on my shoulder and playing in my hair (which my husband will tell you is my favorite form of physical contact outside of the genitals touching and all that) were only signs of friendship because when I sent her a message about it she pretty much told me we would never ever ever be more than wonderful friends.

In a way I'm extremely sad.  I've lost my only current love interest (unless you count someone I've never told and don't plan to tell because I only met her briefly and don't want to be a creeper) and I feel kind of hollow.  I love the chase, but at the same time I'm very glad she gave such a direct and undoubtable answer to my questions.  Now I know she's a lost cause and I'm glad to have gotten it all off my chest.  Still, I need something to daydream about so I'm going to have to find someone else to fruitlessly chase after.  Maybe it's engineering but I find myself seeking emotional distress just so I don't have to worry that I'm becoming robotic in my mental activity.

Anyway, that brings us to now.  I'll make more boring and day's events related posts from here.

I'll feel like a fool if I don't build a foundation for who I am at the moment and just jump right in to complaints about seemingly random topics out of the blue.

I graduated.  It wasn't as hard as I had once expected it to be.  When one reaches the third year of an undergraduate engineering career, one thinks it must go on forever and that an eventual diploma is simply a cruel joke, a piece of meat on a string tied in front of a starving dog.  However, that turned out not to be the case, and yet as I shook hands with my mentors and grabbed my diploma booklet from their outstretched hands I couldn't help wishing that it HAD been a cruel joke and that my time as an undergraduate would never end. 

In this case I should say something about wishing that I could continue learning and growing in a welcoming environment and blah blah blah, but the truth is that I was afraid.  I, being one of the bravest people I know, had never considered that this blood curdling fear was even remotely possible.  As a cheap photographer snapped my picture and my tassel fell into my right eye for the hundredth time a single tear developed.  I was going somewhere else.  Anyone who had ever meant anything to me was not.  They would all be left behind, or rather I would be left behind as I drove away from them, especially by her.  I let the fear run through me.  While I was packing, while we were loading the cars, while we were driving to my temporary summer residence, I hid my tears of fear and desperation.  I felt like the world was running by me and I was left dizzy and confused in its wake.

Then we unpacked.  We settled in.  I felt mildly better.  I was only an hour away and we could go and visit.  We started our summer jobs.  I worked packing books in a distribution warehouse from 6 AM - 3 PM every day while he worked the graveyard shift as a hotel desk attendant.  It was hard to sleep alone, especially since all we had was a futon we had found by the dumpster at our apartment complex, but we kept it up because we needed the money.  She was still within arms reach in a way and nearing the end I made what I think is a mistake and a blessing at the same time.  I told her how I felt and she was taken aback.  She never really told me what she thought about the whole thing.  I know that this means no, but I'm not one to accept that answer unless it is a direct one, so I floundered and writhed in frustration as she rolled in back and forth in her mind for a while.  I became so frustrated in the end that I almost told her to fuck off and leave me alone if she wasn't going to accept me as a partner rather than a friend, but I didn't because I hang on to things for too long as well.

He and I got married, sometime in June, I don't remember when because we're going to celebrate our anniversary on Halloween instead.  It was small and sweet and just what I wanted.  I wore a navy blue dress and he wore his favorite jeans and my favorite button down shirt on him.  We invited her and she didn't come.  Thinking back I don't really know what I expected her to do.  Honestly, this is the part that made it feel like a mistake to tell her anything.

Suddenly, and I mean that because three months seems like the blink of an eye when you are busy, we were moving again.  The fear took hold again, as well as the uncontrollable crying.  I just kept thinking about her and all the friends I was leaving behind and how I could never replace them and sometimes I would just cry.  I would cry and cry and cry and then take a shower so I could cry without my husband hearing.  I don't think I've really told anyone because I hate crying and being weak, but I couldn't help it this time.  Leaving your undergrad isn't the same as leaving high school in any way.  I was happy to leave high school, the names, the reputations, the people, the shitty friendships that I kept up because I had no one else, but with my undergrad I felt like I was leaving my real home, the home where my heart is or whatever people say.  While we were packing and moving and unpacking I hid it all.  I pretended like I was excited and happy and joyful and tra la la and all that.  I waved exuberantly goodbye to everyone, friends and family but immediately after I always cried.  I cried after the last time I saw my friends for dinner.  I cried after my parents left my new apartment.  I cried so much and hid it from everyone, except for small portions of crying in my husband's arms.

But we were here.  We had moved in.  I busied myself straightening up the apartment and learning about the town.  We found restaurants we liked and fun places to be and even a few new friends.  I still had weeks before school was starting and I spent most of that time really acquainting with the town.  We certainly liked it when we got there and still do.  It's a really nice college town much like my undergrad and that really helped lessen my crippling sadness about moving.  I think the internet is also due some gratitude for making it really easy to keep in touch.  I eventually settled in and realized that moving away doesn't mean the place you were before somehow disappears as does everyone's memory of you ever existing.  However, I still felt like she was trying to forget about us.  Sometimes I could swear I felt a kind of mental pressure from her trying to push me away and get rid of the memories.  I know I was imagining it but it felt horrible all the same.  Still, I was glad I had been up front with her and told her how I was feeling.  I just kept wishing that she would change her mind and suddenly tell me that she had fallen madly in love with me.  Spoiler for later posts, it didn't happen.  And that was my summer.

I want to say I'm getting back into blogging because I want to share my experience as a graduate student with others and pass on important or helpful knowledge I've obtained about life in the process.  One might even consider getting married over the summer a reason to blog, but that isn't really it either.  I've really logged in again because I feel like a 15-year-old high school kid who just got ultra-snubbed by his crush and is now left lonely and sad holding his books in the hallway as she walks discouragingly yet beautifully away.

I want to go eat sushi now, so detailed explanations will have to wait.  If one has read this blog in the past, then one knows that I'm not particularly normal just like everyone else in the world isn't normal, but my particular abnormality is that regardless of the fact that I have a stable and beautiful relationship with a delicate young man who is now my husband, I am constantly and probably unhealthily obsessed with woman.  One of the most beautiful and interesting young women that I have ever met recently turned me down with a deafening finality and I'm still trying to rationalize my next steps.  Sometimes I think I should give up but my unquenchable thirst for women always crushes that thought within moments. 

You'll just have to wait for the rest of this discussion.