You didn’t know me last year when every week I was rip-roaringly MAD at Bateman about one thing or another. God, was I angry. All. the. damn. time. I remember once I was so furious at him (over sushi, of all things) that I had a temper tantrum in bed and kicked all the sheets on the floor.
And why?
To be honest, I really don’t know. (Cough, anger management issues, cough.) Uncertainty in our relationship, I think. It was a tough time. We had been dating for over a year, but the entire time long distance. There were still four months before Match Day, when fourth year medical students find out where they’ll be doing their residencies. Bateman could have been headed to Denver, or Philadelphia, or Stony Brook, and I wasn’t ready to move to any of those places. And we hardly ever talked about Feelings or The Future.
Anyway, things got better when we found out that he would be right here in Manhattan. I cried when he told me. I’m not even kidding. I was standing on the corner of 54th and 3rd during my lunch break when my cell phone rang. It was Bateman. I tried to congratulate him, but I couldn’t speak. I had to hang up almost immediately, and then I ran into Barnes & Noble and sobbed hysterically for 10 minutes in the SAT review section. I wasn’t even sure WHY I was crying. It wasn’t happiness, or sadness, or any other feeling I could identify. It was just EMOTION. I was crying tears of emotion.
He called me again later that night; he was celebratory, probably a little drunk. This time I found my voice. “I’m so excited for you,” I gushed. Sincerely.
“I’m excited for us,” he said. And suddenly I knew that us would be OK.
But now, eight months later, I’m getting angry again, and I think it’s Fear. This moving in together thing. I’m not going to pretend that the ONLY thing I’m feeling is jubilation. There’s Fear involved. Uncertainty. Emotion. Feelings that aren’t always easily identified.
Maybe that’s why I’m suddenly consumed with the idea of Moving Away From New York.
But I’m not going to let these feelings get the best of me. Or, at least, I’m going to try.
