Break out the sparkly purple bowling ball and the Riesling

So all the first year law students left town like bats out of hell yesterday, along with the rest of the campus. Cornell is starting fall break, and the law school actually gives us a whole week off. But I'm going to be hanging out in Ithaca for awhile; later in the week I'll be road tripping down to Philly and Baltimore to see Tom, Katie, and Jason, but last night Rob and I celebrated our third anniversary. (It was actually Tuesday but this was when we were free.) We ate at the Aurora Inn - a very classy place, with some excellent live jazz music. When we returned home we discovered to our great amusement that we had gotten each other the exact same gift - a massage session! We even went about it the exact same way: tried out the Fingerlakes School of Massage, and not finding any info on their website, tried "massage" on yp.yahoo.com, and then scrolled down to the one place that had a website, checked it out, and decided that was the place! We finished the night off by going to see Wallace and Gromit. It was really funny. The tomatomaster even rated it 100% - which is amazing, since most movies fall into the "rotten" category. So all in all, I laughed more last night than I have in quite awhile.

All in all though it wasn't the anniversary celebration that I'd been hoping for, since I'd managed to get my hopes up that he'd finally pop the big question. Since I'm utterly incapable of hiding what I'm feeling, at least from the people I really care about, I brought the subject up with him this morning. *sigh* And after that discussion, I'm feeling miserable and hopeless, because it seems like we're not closer to getting engaged now than we were a year ago. It seems that every time we pass one hurdle he comes up with some other reason why he's not ready yet. Some people don't care about the marraige thing . . . and it's not that I want to be married in general. I am hopeless, desperately in love with him, and I can't even describe how desperately I want us to make that commitment to each other. And he says he feels essentially the same way about me, can't imagine life without me and he loves me so much and knows he wants to marry me eventually and so on and so on - but he's not ready to get married. And I'm prolonging my own misery by pushing him on the issue . . . but it's incredibly hard to keep waiting and waiting when I don't understand why I'm waiting, don't know what he's thinking or feeling. It's like my life is on hold - and has been on hold for two years already, and it's killing me inside. And now I can't stand still anymore. In another month or so I'm going to be starting the search for a job next summer. It's time that I start making plans and actually implementing them . . . start getting on with living my life. But those decisions about what I'm doing in the next stage of my life necessarily are affected by him, and yet he's got us in this holding pattern. So my emotions are hoavering in some twilight zone between desperation and despair.

But that's not healthy, there's no doubt about that. So I called up the girls tonight and we're going bowling, and then we're going to come back and crack open a bottle of my favorite Riesling, and I'm not going to talk about him - despite the fact that Janine and Patti and El are exactly the people I would talk about relationship stuff with. because I can't handle it. Somehow I have to pretend for tonight at least that he doesn't exist, and re-establish myself. I'm giving up on him, just a little bit. Oh I'm not breaking up with him. I'm desperately hopelessly in love with him. But this weekend, something broke inside. I haven't been desperate before. But after that talk, when it seemed like we're as far away as ever from taking the next step, I'm desperate. And the only way I know how to deal with this pain is to bury myself in my work, my friends, anything and everything except him. Pretend he doesn't exist, just a little bit. I have to reclaim my life, a life where he doesn't exist and doesn't matter, because that's the only way I know how to stop feeling so miserable.

I warned him that I couldn't wait forever. I can't do it. It's not in my nature to stand still.

So I'm going bowling. Break out the sparkly purple bowling ball. Watch a movie with the girls - not a chick flick, because I've had my fill of romance for the weekend. Drink some Dr. Frank. Bury myself in tort review tomorrow. Watch the rest of my LOST dvd's. Go the gym. Take a roadtrip. Anything but feel like this.