The Single Life is Different

Friday night I went for a long walk and watched a movie. Saturday I ran errands alone. Sunday I wasted too much time before being invited out with friends. 

I have been trying to blog. I have been trying so hard to write. I currently have eleven blog drafts that I have started in the past two weeks and can't seem to finish. I think it's because of the boy. When I start writing and get deep into my thoughts, he is always there. So many of my drafts have nothing to do with him, but I can't stop. This is the one blog that I have been able to finish, so I'm sorry that it isn't all rainbows and butterflies, but I wanted to write something. 

I'm doing fine. You could probably say that I'm doing well, but I constantly second-guess myself and the progress I have made. 

Life in Madison has been different. When I first moved to this town I was forced to be independent. I went out, made friends and joined clubs. I played the online dating game and I met a great guy. That great guy became a wonderful boyfriend, and I became comfortable with my built-in best friend. And now I am back to where I was one year ago, attempting to navigate this town alone. It's fun and it's terrifying. I became so accustomed to being in a relationship that I somehow forgot how much time I have when I'm alone. Since we broke up about a month ago I have watched an entire season of Orange is the New Black. I have walked a lot. I go to bed earlier. I bike to and from work a lot. And the two times I have run into him at work I have felt physically ill. This is why I didn't want to date a co-worker. 

Tonight is another Friday night. I plan to bike home from work and make food for a football party this weekend. Tomorrow I will be going back to yoga with a friend and then cleaning my apartment before Chip comes to visit. Sunday I am thinking brunch and a long bike ride with Chip. In the evening we can explore more of Madison together. 

I'll continue to take it day by day. It is bound to get better. 

Thirty Minutes

Thirty minutes was all it took for everything I called normal to drastically shift and be flipped upside down. Thirty minutes was all it took for a ten month relationship to end and for every piece of my now ex-boyfriend to be removed from my apartment. His contacts case is gone, my apartment keys have been removed from his key ring (and his from mine), and his bike is no longer next to mine in the garage sharing a bike lock. That was it. It's over. And my heart hurts.

I know in the long run it is the right thing to do, but that doesn't stop my heart from aching or my fingers from automatically calling him when I leave work. 

As I drove out of the garage at work a few days after the thirty-minute incident I pressed the green call button on my steering wheel. 

"Call. Say 'by number' or 'by name'" said the voice coming out of the dashboard.

"Name"

"Who would you like to call?"

"Mr. Good Grammar."

"Call Mr. Good Grammar? Say 'yes' to proceed. Otherwise say 'back' or 'cancel.'"

"Yes."

"Calling Mr. Good Grammar."
 

Ring. Ring...
 

"No! Stop! Ah!"

I frantically hit the red button on the steering wheel hoping with all of my hardest hopes that his phone hadn't yet started ringing. 

I wanted to talk to him. I wanted to ask how his day was. I wanted to tell him about my ridiculous trainee in class. I wanted to tell him about what a pill Wilbur had been that morning before work. I wanted to ask him to come over and take a walk downtown with me. I wanted a hug. But I knew I couldn't. I ended the relationship and I had to suffer the consequences of my choices. 

My eyes started to well up with tears, so I pressed the green button again. I tried calling my mother, a co-worker, a friend from Thailand, a friend in California, and a friend back in New York. No one answered. I didn't leave messages. 

By the time I arrived home my head hurt. My head hurt from trying not to cry. My head hurt from trying not to think about the guy that I had spent the better part of my life in Madison loving. 

 

I am now able to count the time since the breakup in weeks, so hopefully I will soon stop counting the minutes. 

When my friend Jeff asked if the breakup was bad I hesitated before saying, "well, no..." It wasn't bad, but I definitely felt far from good, or even okay. I was grateful when Dan chimed in with, "good or bad, it's still a breakup." 

Thank you, Dan.

I didn't need the justification for my roller coaster-like emotions, but it was nice to feel a little less crazy.

I came into my office on a Monday morning to find the few items I had left at his place in a bag under my desk. He had warned me it would be there, but that wasn't enough preparation for the ache my heart felt. That was it. My stuff was with me and his stuff was with him. The end.

I have my good days and my bad days. Heck, I still have my good minutes and my bad minutes, but I will be just fine. I know that much crazier and more significant things have happened in shorter periods of time, but for me, and for my right now, those thirty minutes rocked my world.

Bachelor Number 5: Mr. Good Grammar

After the bruises on my hip, knees and ego healed, I felt like I could finally muster the confidence to face another date. This also happened to be right around the time Mr. Good Grammar asked me out for a drink.

I sent Mr. Good Grammar a message a few weeks prior during one of my lunch break Ok Cupid sessions. His photo looked nice and his grammatically perfect profile and mention of his similarities to the Cookie Monster melted my heart. My blood pressure increased every time I logged into the site in hopes of receiving a message from Mr. Good Grammar. It took a few days, but it eventually came through. Not only was it short and sweet, the message kept up with the grammatically correct precedence he had set. Over the next two weeks his responses were erratic. Then I received the message that I had been dreading: “Life has been a little crazy lately. We had our annual conference this past week.” Oh no. I had been afraid of this. My sneaking suspicion of him working for the same company was confirmed and I closed my browser.

Amy, a coworker who had been very interested in my dating shenanigans, asked if I had heard from Mr. Good Grammar. I lowered my eyes, and hesitated before saying, “yes, but that’s over.” She had a look of genuine concern when she asked, “what happened?!” I told her that my greatest fear of him working for the same company had been confirmed, therefore, we could not date. Her look of concern turned to a look of disgust. “Are you kidding me? You aren’t going to write back to him because you work at the same place? That’s ridiculous. Do you know how many people in our age group work here?” Over the next few minutes we bickered back and forth until I caved and begrudgingly agreed to respond to his message. And later that evening, I did just that.

As our messages were exchanged over the next few weeks, I enjoyed the conversation, but was still hesitant about working at the same place. On the other hand, I was thrilled by the speed at which our messages were being sent back and forth. He clearly wasn’t sitting like an anxious puppy just waiting for my messages, but he was polite in the amount of time it took him to respond. My mind began to wander. He was probably busy at work with a life outside of surfing the internet, had lots of friends that kept him from constantly updating his profile and was dashingly handsome.

I knew that his office was in a different building than mine, but I frequently worked in his building and had a fear I would run into him at work before we had planned to meet each other. Sure enough, my fear materialized as we passed in the hall weeks before we planned to meet.

While walking through the halls with a coworker I saw two men walking toward us. I had the sneaking suspicion, lump in my throat and butterflies in my stomach that told me Mr. Good Grammar was one of the approaching men. My face burned and the nervous sweats kicked in when I was close enough to confirm that he was the person I had seen in a handful of photos. I did my best not to make eye contact, and Margaret and I turned the corner.  We returned to the classroom to find a note from Mr. Good Grammar and his friend, and yes, I was correct, Pete and Mr. Good Grammar signed their names. I only hoped he hadn’t noticed my name tag in the front row.

It was about two weeks later when Mr. Good Grammar decided to ask me out for a drink, just as I was beginning to think he didn’t want to go out with me. He sent me a message asking if I would like to meet him for a drink at The Mason Lodge. Umm… Mason Lodge?

I asked my office mate, Mr. Madison, what and where The Mason Lodge was. He replied with a question, asking why I would need to know. I told him about my prospective date and he gave me another funny look before answering, “isn’t that the men’s secret society? Whoa. Could he really be taking you there for a date? Are women even allowed?”

I did some googling and questioning before finally sending Mr. Good Grammar a message. “Sure! I would love to meet for a drink. How about Friday? Where is The Mason Lodge?” I felt a little silly asking for the address of a place that anyone with a computer would have been able to google, but the prospect of being invited to a secret men’s society and lodge warranted the address request and possibly an escort into the building.

Mr. Good Grammar responded with the address, I copy-pasted into google, and everything made perfect sense! The Mason Lodge was really The Mason Lounge! Mr. Good Grammar wasn’t so perfect.

We met for drinks and I instantly knew that despite the slightly confusing autocorrect error from “lodge” to “lounge,” he was pretty darn perfect.

To be continued…

13.1 Miles (well, a few more...)

This is continuation of the Race Weekend post.

40,000 people racing is outrageous. I realized this when I was at the starting line with all of them. Throughout the 19 miles of my half marathon I never stopped being amazed by the number of participants.

For those of you that are thinking, "wait a minute... since when are half marathons 19 miles?" Well, let me tell you.

Dressed and ready for the race!

Starting around 2 pm the Team Challenge participants began lining up for the shuttle to the start line. The strip was closed and traffic was a little crazy, so the three-mile trip to the starting area took nearly 45 minutes. While I was on the bus with Team Wisconsin Heather (of Team DC) sent me a photo of her with Sean.

{source}

Look familiar?

Let me also add a little fun fact. Sean came to the event as the token celebrity for the CCFA Team Challenge half marathon. He forgot his running shoes and had to buy a pair Sunday morning. The Bachelor doesn't pick its contestants based on intelligence? Weird.

When I arrived at the start line I was nervous, jittery, excited and looking for Heather. And a bathroom. In my search for Heather I found the tent of wedding runners. There were at least a hundred couples that were running the half marathon to renew their vows or get married. They had ridiculous outfits and ran through officiants stationed along the course. Oh, Las Vegas, you are not my favorite place in the world for anything other than people watching.

I found myself an "in honor of" bib, filled it out, pinned it on, and headed for my corral. While I was waiting I received a text message from my mom saying that she and Ann had found a perfect viewing spot.

With 40,000 racers and a staggered start I didn't cross the start line until 45 minutes after the gun.

We ran about less than a mile before turning around and heading back up the strip, passing the start line. I frantically looked for Heather, but I couldn't find her. As I scanned the crowd and saw all of the runners in the orange tank tops I was completely overcome with emotion.

I couldn't believe that all of my training had led up to this moment. I couldn't believe that I had raised as much money as I had. I couldn't believe that six months had already passed from the time I first agreed to the race. I couldn't believe I wasn't running with Heather.

I kept on racing.

I was right on pace and proud of myself. The wind was brutal, but I felt great.

At around mile seven I started thinking about Heather and how badly I wanted to cross the finish line with her.

At around mile eight I started to think about how annoying the wind was and how much my knees were starting to bother me.

At mile nine I awkwardly retrieved my telephone from my SpiBelt and tried to call Heather. Her telephone was off. How would I find her?

At mile ten I saw Team Wisconsin people cheering us on. I told Becky, one of the WI coordinators, that I was going to turn around to find Heather in a little while, and if she saw Heather, to please tell her.

At this point in the race, the course was taking us back down the strip. There were thousands of people running in the opposite direction on the other side of the street. I ran down the course looking for Heather. I decided that if I didn't see her by the time I hit the 12-mile mark, I would just turn around, start walking back, and wait for her to catch up to me.

But at about 11.7 miles I saw her! I yelled her name and jumped across the median to hug her. I was ecstatic. I started walking with her and her friend.

"What are you doing?"
"I'm walking with you."
"What?"
"I want to finish the race with you, so I'm going to walk with you."
"Meaghan, how far were you? We have over seven miles left."
"That's fine. I don't care about my time, I just want to finish with you."

So the three of us walked.

I had a few moments when I thought I was going to die, or at the very least pass out, but we made it.

My coach found us at the 12- mile mark and was thrilled to see me.

"What happened to you? My wife was at home tracking you, she told me you were doing well, and then your chip wasn't registering any more times. I couldn't find you!"
"Yeah, I decided to find Heather."
"I thought that might happen."

As Heather and I crossed the finish line I wanted to cry, fall down, throw up, and go to sleep. I didn't want to have my photo taken, but at the same time all I wanted was a photo of us.

We met our moms in the finishers' tent and had plenty of photos taken.

I announced my half-marathon retirement and we discussed our plans for the evening.

Heather and I went out, danced, gambled and drank a few well-deserved beers.

Heather won.

All in all, we had a fantastic weekend and went home with very sore bodies.

Two weeks later I heard from the group I volunteer with, the Jaycees. The president received the donation we were waiting for from working at BeerFest, and she had the check made out to CCFA. She told me the amount and I started shaking.

I called Heather.
I called my parents.
I called Matt.

I was speechless and amazed. I picked up the check the next day to submit to CCFA. I opened the envelope and was in complete shock all over again.

$4200 for CCFA

Thanks to everyone for the support. This was an absolutely amazing experience.

A fun fact about the donation: My parents met Heather's parents when they were in the Jaycees together in Annapolis. They became best friends and Heather and I were friends before we had any choice in the matter. Life is funny like that.