TGIF you guys, seriously. This week was a doozy! I’m ready for the weekend, and very, very excited to have a president who will go down in history as the first sitting president to endorse gay marriage. I hate to be a debbie downer, but I hope this won’t hurt his chances for another term in office…I guess time will tell, and words aren’t actions, but it was a lovely historic experience to be a part of.
Guess who’s going to Australia for her birthday?
I’m beyond excited to see the Aussie again and get to spend some solid time with her. Granted, it will be vacation-styles for me (and her as she will be taking the time off from work) so it will still be a much sweeter taste than “real life” inevitably offers, but why not enjoy it!
Mind you, this trip is still a few months out, but it’s officially happening. I can’t wait.
So. I’m broke. Like, seriously broke. Although happily, no longer in debt. So. I’ve begun looking for part-time work to supplement my standard 8-5 grind as said 8-5 grind is offering very little mental, social or monetary stimulation, and I’m dying here. I’ve chosen – perhaps ill-advisedly being as I am in what may indeed be the service industry-capital of the world – to look into bar tending gigs.
I must preface this job search by saying, I have no bar tending experience. Oh, I’m working towards a license, and thus I know the ingredients of standard mixed drinks, the standard protocols of beverage service, the alcohol and service laws, but the technicality of bar tending and the actual practice of gaining experience are two incredibly different things (as is the case with anything – hello college education vs. practical application of said education in the real world. Please see above comment on utter mental, social and monetary lack-of-inspiration).
This is what I’ll look like, instantaneously, upon becoming a bartender, yes? Just generally hot?
However, I have just begun my job search – anticipating an official license-ing timeline of a week from today – and it is disheartening. I mean, really insane to realize how hard I’m going to have to work to try to secure myself this parttime job. Was it wise to look into an industry in which I will only really be able to work Friday nights, and weekends, wherein the most experienced individuals are the go-tos for Friday night and weekend shifts? Probably not. However, I am not prideful, I’m doing this for the money. And the insistence that I would make more in tips than in putting in 16 hours on a weekend working retail or at a White Castle or something, still makes me confident that my decision isn’t the worst one in history. However, I still don’t have a job lined up.
Basically, this is a post to inform you that if you are looking for part-time supplementary income, you may do well to take stock of your availability before choosing a part-time, supplementary job. Although the Aussie did wisely remind me that I have only been looking for three days. And bar-tending is a career for many people, so my competition is going to be stiff. Oh sure, so wise now. Where was she two weeks ago? 
I kid, I kid, I knew going into this that I wasn’t going to be able to breeze my way into a Sunday morning spot at a bar within walking distance to my house (nope, lying. I totally hoped that would happen. From Day 1). But, this is a knowledge-base that will do me well as a back-up, should I get laid off, should the job market tank again, should I decide to say screw it all and want to go traveling and need to have service industry experience to get gigs here and there….I don’t know, it just seemed like a good thing to have in my back-pocket (especially since I ignored my parents advice and never got waitressing experience in high school).
But now, I have to get that bar tending experience in my backpocket…and thus the search continues….
Did you know that today, April 12, is National Grilled Cheese Day in the states?? I’ve never craved a grilled cheese made with Kraft singles more than I do right now!
I was chatting with a coworker with whom I’m very close yesterday, and he asked after the Aussie, to which I replied things felt like they were going well on my end, but I could tell that she is struggling with the distance. There have been several teary phone calls and skype-sessions over the last few weeks as she warns me that she’s feeling vulnerable and needs me to speak up more about when I miss her, call her more on my own initiative, and so forth. Now, I’m not good at communication – a point on which I’m working – but I’m terrible with things needing me. I don’t even bother with house plants. I have begun feeling guilty if I don’t let her know when I’m not going to be near my phone, and to feeling frantic when I respond to a message I didn’t see for an hour. I have to hope that if we were in the same place, there wouldn’t be this gaping space of nothing when I don’t respond to her immediately, but this is the situation in which we are for the time being. And literally so, this will be the process for at least the next year as I keep working on my classes. She has said twice this week that she doesn’t know how much longer she can do this. In the end of my conversation with coworker, the question that hung unanswered in the air was, do I let her go? Am I hurting her worse by not feeling the same pangs of missing, and the same bouts of longing for closer proximities because I’m just working to keep my life balanced here, and looking at phone calls and skyping sessions as one more thing that needs to be scheduled in? I am thoroughly enjoying continuing to getting to know her, and I do wish we were closer so it could be happening in a more organic fashion, but I also think I am looking at this for what it is – a girl I’ve been dating now for nearly 3 months. Not 3 years. This is honeymoon phase, and there’s already a lot of neediness happening, I’m feeling. I keep getting the impression that she sees this as an interim before I move to Australia and we settle in together. I have told her that I am looking at this as unorthodox dating, and she tells me she understands that it hasn’t been very long, but I’m just not sure we’re on the same page. I just don’t want to hurt her unnecessarily. Ugh relationships of any and all sorts are just hard.
Plus, the question coworker asked as we parted ways was basically, “You literally just came out to your family and larger group of friends. Are you using the Aussie as a placeholder; are you comfortable to be single and out as a lesbian yet?” It was a good question.
I think I am bad at relationships. Namely because I am loving this long-distance relationship I have going on with the Australian. I love that I can text throughout the day (thank god for smart phones with international apps!) and speak on the phone once an evening, and Skype once a week, and that I have the rest of my days for me. For work and gym-time and classes and homework. I don’t know if that makes me a bad person, or just bad in relationships in general. I think , though, that maybe it has more to do with how poor I am at multi-tasking.
Is a relationship based on how well one can multi-task? Do be able to take care of your own life and responsibilities and demands, and still be looking out for your significant others’ responsibilities and demands? Still be able to ask, in the midst of your own crazy day, how did your test go? Or, better still, to wish one luck on said test before-the-instance? The Aussie is amazing – she remembers when I wake up for the gym and when I have class and what days I have tests. I can barely remember if she’s on a day shift or a night shift, and she lets me know that every week. I get a constant weekly reminder, and I still wish her a good night at work on days when she’s had a day shift, and so forth.
It certainly doesn’t help, of course, that we are dealing with a 15.5 hour time difference, so that I am going to sleep as she is waking up. Yet, it all works out so nicely, I don’t have to feel guilty if I can meet up for lunch because I need to use the time to study, and I get my weekends to study and go to class, and hit up the gym and sleep in for hours if I want, without having to worry if she wants to go out, or if we should be meeting up for dinner.
Maybe it’s more a matter of my not having a lot of time for much outside of work and school right now, and that this relationshp can only work because it is long distance. If she and I were in the same place, maybe we would have broken up by now, I would have been accused of not making time, and I would have had to admit that she was right, and she deserved someone who could give her more of their time. Maybe it is lucky that I fell for a girl who lives on the other side of the world and that we can take this length of time to continue getting to know each other slowly instead of becoming joined at the hip and spending every spare minute together (per my last relationship, and per what I think the Aussie would prefer given her druthers).
Yes, maybe everything is going the only way it can be expected given my pre-Australian-meeting plans for myself, and I should be happy to have such a patient girl calling me from the other side of the world, and I should make a better effort to write down weekly shift breakdowns, and wish her good mornings and good nights appropriately. 
For the time-being that’s all there is – distance and my work and my classes and her work and her family. And I – we both perhaps – need to focus on enjoying the now, and worrying less about if I’m bad in relationships and will this one fall apart once we are in the same place. So I ought to enjoy the now with her, unorthodox as it may be.
Sorry if this post was rambling. But them’s the thoughts.
I came out to my parents this weekend.
It went better than even I could have imagined. And I tend to be an optimist.
I do think I was aided by the distance between us in this instance – I had emailed a couple weeks previous to ensure they would be in town this past weekend, which of course prompted warning bells so then I had to reassure them that I was incredibly happy and had some news, but was not engaged or pregnant. My parents trusted that I would not feel the need to fly home to tell them I had met some amazing guy, so they surmised that odds were good I was coming home to tell them I was gay. Which, one would assume, means that they had had questions earlier in time? Hard to say.
Thus I think the two weeks of them mulling over options between the two of them, coming to conclusions, and discussing them together without me present, was probably quite helpful to all three of us when I finally spoke the words aloud. And my mother – who I love more now than I ever knew I have before – took me aside afterwards to admit that she had been sad for a few days upon realizing that I was probably coming home to tell her I was gay. Only because there are certain assumptions made by a parent – they see a one-day engagement, wedding, children (grandchildren!), and home. And she said that she had mourned the fact that the reality was going to be different than what she had half-pictured in her head as I was growing up. But then she said that she had simply had to remind herself that all those things could still happen for me if I wanted them, so why should she be sad? Her daughter was happy, and that is all she could ever want for either of her daughters.
I hated that I had made her sad – that had been my biggest fear in coming out. Not that I would be rejected or kicked out, but that I would disappoint my parents – however slightly – and that I would make them sad for the future they had envisioned that would not pan out quite as they had pictured it. Namely, with a man involved.
And then they asked about work, listened patiently and with muted excitement as I spoke of the Aussie (I know that was a lot to drop on them in one weekend – “Oh, by the way – there’s a chance I could move to Australia on a working visa if things go well in this brand-new-long-distance-relationship I’ve embarked upon!” – but I also don’t want to call them crying over the first long-distance fight and have to explain everything from Square 1.
My mom called me that night when I got back home from the airport – told me that she and my dad had told his sisters and his mom, and that my grandmother was trying to call me. I called her, and the minute she picked up the phone was told, “Jess. I love, love, love you. You remember that. You can always come home to us, always.” This from an Italian-Catholic grandmother.
I have never in my life felt more loved by my family than this past weekend.
And I know that in cases such as mine I am the anomaly. Which makes me even more grateful for my family, and even more sad for the state of the world.
My Aussie left this morning. After a truly incredible night of Pre-Valentine’s Day feeling-adored, and a morning with cuddles and quite a few tears from yours truly – she held it together until the cab came. There’s not much in my life thus far that has felt this heartbreaking without being an actual heartbreak – I’m finding it quite difficult to focus today.
Still, we have a tentative timeline in place – the classes in which I am currently enrolled will (ideally, offerings pending) finish up around November/December (or possibly April of 2013….a less ideal option). This will give both of us a bit of time to pay down debt and to save up money, and for me to research the ins and outs of working visas, job opportunities, and so forth in Australia, as we continue our relationship long-distance and see where it takes us and how we do.
I’m hoping that in about a year I’ll be in Australia.
And yes, in that year there will need to be visits to her city. Honest, focused visits to see if I could really see myself living there. And there will need to be frequent phone calls, and random texts, and skype dates so that we can ensure that we stay strong and committed for and to each other.
So as sad as I am to know that I will not get to see her after work today, it helps to know that possibly around June I could be venturing down unda’ for a visit, and possibly around January of 2013 I could be packing bags to start a new life. Makes the waiting and the “getting back into the swing of things” a little easier.
I hope that St. Valentine and his Hallmark holiday of candy and pink have treated everyone well, and that we all take time today to let our loved ones know how much we care for them.
This photo-from-the-interwebs was titled, "Write What You Love" - well I'm loving this little miss Aussie to no end. I'm glad I gave it a go, it's nice.
I’m in full-on smit mode. A smitten kitten as she called me the other day, and a nickname which I rather like. I have never been with a more genuinely kind person than this little Aussie, and I can’t even begin to tell you how content having her in my life makes me. I fret here and there that part of the comfort I feel is the short time frame of this entire affair, the fact that there is an end-date, that there is a push to capitalize on every minute that I have to spend with her.
But then I push the over-analyzing aside and enjoy her company again. Because I care for this little miss more than I’ve ever cared for anyone else before, beyond my dear friends. And we’ve discussed staying in touch and dating long-distance after this trip is over, and I know that I can’t not give that a go. We both are aware of the tribulations this amount of distance may cause, and we are both committed to the utmost honesty – if one of us starts to feel differently or if things come up that would change our intention to see how things continue for this year as I finish my classes and she pursues potential additional education herself, we must bring it up to the other, discuss it, be honest even if it hurts. And I think the fact that we are already communicating like this, and being vocal about where we stand on things, that’s a good sign. We want this to work, we both do, equally. Which I think is as good a sign as any in a relationship of any kind, close, long-distance, friends, more-than. So I’m excited to see how it goes. Because I know with all of me that I can’t not try.
I still get a week with her – literally 1 week as she will fly out after I’ve come to work next Tuesday – and I intend to cherish her as much as I can every minute of this week. It feels surreal that she will be leaving me, when for so long we have been able to see each other so frequently. Just thinking about her no longer being around to see when I leave work puts a lump in my throat, so I’m doing what I can to push it away. Because a week is still more than some people get, and I’m lucky enough to be experiencing such a wonderful time with a wonderful girl, that is what I ought to be focusing on.
So, also, this post is to alert that I am indeed alive. Happy Monday!
The 5 days I spent in SF with my adorable Aussie were truly incredible. Not only was it the first vacation I have had in a while that wasn’t also either Christmas or Thanksgiving, but I got to spend it with a girl of whom I grew more and more fond each day. If this is what healthy, happy relationships are supposed to feel like then I am glad I finally have been able to experience it at the ripe old age of 28.
We get along like friends – and have since we met; easily, goofy-ly, very comfortably. Yet, I still want to kiss her every chance I get, and rip her clothes off as soon as I get her alone somewhere. It’s awesome, to be so attracted to both her personality and her physicality. Even makes me appreciate the shit relationships I’ve had previously, to now be able to have my eyes opened to how completely different a mutually enjoyed relationship can feel.
I say all of this in the present tense because Aussie extended her stay in the states so she could come back to New York with me. Is that an insane obsessive decision that I whole-heartedly agreed to?
Playing house suddenly feels like a lot more fun than I used to imagine it would be...
It is crazy for me – who is very routine, and has been very by-the-books heretofore in my life – to be so spontaneous with this girl. But it’s wonderful to just sort of be following what my heart wants.
She has friends in town so it was a doubly convenient visit as I won’t be the sole entertainment rendering her bored when I’m at work all day, and raring to go at night when I have to get up the next morning. And I am so frickin’ excited to get to leave work and see her tonight. A taste of what dating her would be in real life….if we lived in the same city.
Ugh. The day she actually flies back home is going to be quite the rude awakening…
STILL, that’s not today nor is it tomorrow, and I’ll be damned if I’m not going to enjoy every minute I get to spend with her. Yup, this is me, giddy. It’s good to be back.
