Just a small rant: As I’ve been listening to the radio lately, I’ve heard a few commercials that involve background noise of horn honking. There will be people in a drive thru, or a busy intersection, or just some random ambient noise, that includes an angry driver honking. Is it me, or is this an incredibly bad idea? If I’m driving down the road, listening to the radio, and all of a sudden I hear a few cars honking, what am I supposed to think? I freaked out the first time I heard one of those commercials - “Did I cut someone off? Should I be worried? Is there an accident?”

This is Charlottesville, not New York - honking doesn’t happen all that often (comparatively), and it should mean something when it does. Something more than, “Oh, I should stop by Burger King on the way home…”, that is.

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Now to the actual post: I’ve been hit with some dilemmas lately. When I was at Governor’s School almost three months ago (has it really been that long?), I met a guy. Let’s call him, “Felix” (actually, that’s his real name; well, the name he goes by, anyway… let’s move on). Now, because Governor’s School lasted for just a month, and everyone lived hours and hours away from each other, it’s likely you’d never see the friends you met there again. And in many cases, that went the same for any relationship you became involved in. It brought up some interesting thoughts for me: mainly, the incredible suspension of disbelief high school students have to undertake in order to stay sane in a relationship. They all know that, come the end of high school (or Governor’s School, as it may be), they’ll be going off to different places and it can become almost impossible to keep seeing each other. And it seems weird to me that kids are able to carry on relationships, knowing that there can’t be any long-lasting future in them.

So I was really nervous about becoming emotionally involved with someone at Governor’s School. I went along with it for a little while, until it got to the point where I was thinking more about life after Governor’s School than anything else, distracted from being able to enjoy the time I had left. At that point, I sat down with Felix and tried to figure out what would happen after that short month was over. After a few moments of silence, he said to me, “If it’s meant to be, we’ll find a way to make it work.” And it’s true: it’s not that it’s impossible to continue a relationship from afar - just much more difficult.

It worried me a lot when I first got back from Governor’s School, wondering whether it really was, “meant to be” (I’m just using that as a quote here - that wasn’t meant as a sappy comment). A few weeks went by - and then he came to visit me. Then he visited me again. A few more weeks. I drove down to visit him. Another few weeks. I drove down again. True, it’s hard not being able to see the person you’re dating for weeks at a time, but somehow we made it work. And it is working - very well, in fact. In a lot of ways, I appreciate the time we have together much more now.

So maybe I was a bit harsh in deeming that all high school relationships required a suspension of disbelief. Because, if there’s anything I’ve learned in the past three months, it’s that that suspension of disbelief doesn’t have to be there - the problem doesn’t have to exist at all. Perhaps I’m a bit weird (or rather, weirder than we all thought), but I can’t comfortably keep a relationship going, knowing there’s a definite end point in sight (graduation being the most common case). And yet, now I know that there doesn’t have to be an end point after all - not even in high school. Even in college, when the distance might be much greater, I know that, “If it’s meant to be, we’ll find a way to work it out.”

And it’s nice knowing that we’ve already crossed the first hurdle.

Oh, and because I’m a egomaniac and love seeing putting my picture on my website…

Honey, it should be “an egomaniac,” not “a egomaniac.”

(I love you)

Glad to hear your distance relationship is working out!

I’m involved in two (polyamorous) long-distance relationships. One girlfriend is in Boston, the other in Pittsburgh. I travel by train to see them (and vice versa.)

Glad to see yours are too

Polyamorous relationships get an even worse public opinion that gay relationships, even though it’s the same type of misunderstanding that leads to those negative opinions: people don’t “understand” polyamorous relationships in the same way that I don’t “understand” heterosexual relationships. Just because I can’t fully grasp a man loving a woman, doesn’t mean that one can’t. It’s the same way with loving two people at once - people may not understand it, but who are they to say that it’s impossible or wrong?