Countdown to Forever

So the fall of 2004 went bu unremarkabley.

Ha.

In fact, the fall of 2004 was just another great season in what had alread been a great year.

My girlfriend and I were both now settled into jobs, and we had worked out a system of seeing each other at least every other weekend. But more importantly, that fall we had something that connected us and brought us even closer together: the Boston Red Sox.

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So now that summer was here my girlfriend and I were officially in a long distance relationship. I was back home in the Garden State and she was at her home in the Nutmeg State. Approximately 2 1/2 hours were between us. Considering the fact that I'm an intrepid traveler, it wasn't that long of a drive. But she was working a lot, and I didn't particularly feel comfortable with her family. Anyhow, by mid June I was off traveling and wouldn't be home for more than a few days until Agust. A month and a half of traveling.

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I think the hardest time of our relationship was the last few weeks of college. Not only were we in the midst of the biggest moment of our lives thus far, but we were also trying to figure out where we were going and where our lives would take us. Would we stay together? Would we split up? Could we manage a long distance relationship? These were all the questions that we were asking ourselves, while at the same time trying to figure out what we were going to do for jobs and careers. I already had the short term mapped out: after gradution I was going to Ireland and then coming home to drive across the country.

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So after the first semester of my senior year ended, I went home to New Jersey, and my girlfriend went home to Connecticut. The plan was that I would go up there after Christmas and that she would come down to New Jersey for New Years. That was all well and good, but then life happened.

My family celebrates the traditional Italian Feast of the Seven Fishes on Christmas Eve. And it is a big production. Christmas Eve was on a Wednesday that year, and the Monday before, my older cousins and I piled into two cars and headed down to Philadelphia's Italian market to stock up on supplies. It was a great day filled with great food and great company. On the drive back home, I started to feel a little under the weather. My throat kind of hurt, my ear kind of hurt, and overall I felt pretty down. Tuesday morning I woke up feeling just plain sick. This was troubling because I was going to be doing a lot of the work the next night. Normally this was my father's job and everyone just helped out, but he was battling cancer at the time (a battle which he later won) and was too sick to cook. Now I was sick too. By Thursday I was really bad. I could barely stay out of bed. What's more, my gums started to hurt now in addition to everything else, and I was running a fever. Needless to say I didn't cook that night, two of my cousins did. The next day was Christmas, and I should have gone to the doctor that day, but no doctor's offices were open. And in fact, my mouth was steadily becoming the issue more than anything else. I couldn't eat anything it hurt to chew that much.

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So at the very end of September we started dating. The first few months were interesting. We bonded really fast. At the time another guy was hanging around with me and my friends whose girlfriend was doing a study abroad in Ireland. While she was having the time of her life over in Galway, he was going a bit stir crazy. And he was quite the ladies man, so he started spending time with not only my girlfriend but with my other friends' girlfriends as well. And it's not that we didn't trust the girls, but we knew he had a reputation. So my friends and I confronted him, and things got ugly. He was upset, we were upset, the girls were upset/freaked out. But in the end it made things better for me and my fiance. I knew that I could trust her.

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So the best place to start would of course be the beggining. I met my fiance in college. I think the first time we met was Sophomore year, and I didn't really know who she was until Junior year. But I was in a relationship that year, and it didn't end until the very end of senior year, so I didn't really have time to hang out with or get to know new people.

Then Senior year started, and my fiance was living with my ex-girlfriend from the previous year, and a 10 second walk from my front door across a common courtyard type area to her door. Since I was friends with some of the other girls in the house, I saw her quite a lot.

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Depending on how you look at it, this blog is either going to be a sad memoir of my last few months of freedom or as a sunny look into my future as a soon to be married man. Again, this all depends on how you look at it.

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