Perfect Alli: July 11, 2013

Alli: July 11, 2013

I have five weeks left before school starts. I hate how fast time seems to move in adulthood. A week ago I was at the lake with Thor and now I don’t even know where we stand. After I told him that I didn’t want to come over after work, he got pretty quiet. I probably shouldn’t have said, “If we’re still together, then” when he mentioned meeting his parents at Thanksgiving. I just didn’t want to talk about meeting parents or future plans. He was stepping all over my strategies to concentrate on school. Who does he think he is messing with my head? I know I should have told him that I wasn’t interested in a relationship past summer. It just never felt like the right time.

Once, I went out with a guy who told me on our first date that he didn’t have time for a relationship. He was probably just being honest, but it came off condescending as if he thought he was better than me somehow. I didn’t even want to go on that date in the first place, but he had asked me out four times. I went out with him out of pity and then he turned it around to make me feel unworthy.

Even though I am not always the best at being empathetic (at least that’s what my friends say), I didn’t want to make Thor feel the way that douche made me feel. I like Thor. And he’d been through so much already. I thought if I waited, it wouldn’t sound so harsh. Now I’m just frustrated. He doesn’t know that short-term has been my plan all along. He sent me a text Saturday morning to tell me he was going back up to the Austins' cabin. I sent back “K.” Everyone knows the universal text meaning OK really means I’m pissed. I haven’t heard from him since. I don’t know if he got mad that I was pissed or if he was mad that I didn’t spend the night.

Everything is so unresolved. Maybe I should concentrate on work and lining up references for my med school applications like my mother keeps nagging me to do. It’s the easiest way to end it—no one is to blame, we just drift apart. We’ll see each other again at some point, unless I stop being friends with Sarah and Jessica or Thor and Jeff have a falling out. It’s a big incestuous circle of friends dating friends’ friends or friends’ brothers. What a mess. Note to self: In the future, only date strangers.

I could call him and invite him to go club hopping with us for Sarah’s twenty-first birthday. It would break the ice between us and Jeff is going to be there so if he’s still mad at me Thor can talk to him. But if I do that and then break up with him, how is that going to be better for him or me? I’m pretty sure my friends will be more forgiving of me if I tell them that he stopped texting me. I don’t really want to lose him yet, but it would be a lot easier just to let him slip away. Copyright 2014 Susan Schussler