Babylon

I talked to my spring fling last night.

Yes. It was quite the uh oh moment. But also quite enlightening.

Let's back it up a couple of days. Last Friday, I opted to opt out of the first-year-med-student gathering to hang out with some close friends. I mean, who wants to get trashed in front of 170 classmates-for-the-next-four-years, when you can have a nice drink with a nice dinner with some nice people who won't hold your pathetic-non-partying-self against you?

So that's what I did.

Fast-forward a couple of hours to when my roommate called me.

Michelle! You will NOT believe who I just saw at Lizzie's!
Surprise me.
That guy from spring quarter!
What?!
YEAH!
Huh. Imagine that.
Yeah, good thing you didn't come out tonight.

And then we hung up. I was getting ready for bed, but a little part of me started to wish I had gone to Lizzie's. There's something about blasts from the pasts, especially when the past kind of just tapers off, instead of having an actual end. And let's not lie. I had a good time with him. It would be great to find out what he was up to nowadays...like what he was doing in Chicago!

But I'm a devoted girlfriend, so I stayed home and went to bed instead.

The next day, I was itching to get out (perhaps because of what happened the night before) so with my roommate and posse in tow, we headed out to a bar, where the special of the night was $25 for all you can drink. Crafty med students that we are, only a couple of us got the special wristband, and the rest of us benefited off of it the whole night. Needless to say, I got pretty trashed.

I came home to find my IM box blinking. A message from him.

P: Yo...why didn't you go out tonight?
M: I did...
P: I didn't see you. And you weren't at the past two M1 parties either...
M: And you were?
P: Yeah...I told everyone there I was an M3. HAHAHA.
M: Yeah. That's hilarious.
P: Don't be all grumpy cause I'm making more M1 friends than you are.
M: Haha, I'm not grumpy. But I am tired, so I'm gonna get going.
P: [lots of curse words deliberately deleted to protect the innocent.]
P has now signed off.

Label me speechless. How did I go from thinking he might be the most exciting boy I'd ever kissed to one of the most pathetic? First of all, he's trolling about the med student parties, pretending to be older and wiser - and I didn't have the heart to tell him that everyone knows M3s are far too busy with rotations to go to our parties. Secondly, I don't remember him being so needy.

It seems weird that an encounter with an ex-fling could validate my current relationship, but it truly did. I'm no longer itching to see him. No longer wishing for a happy ending. No longer wanting anything from him. Having that last conversation with him just made me so happy that my boy is exactly the way he is.

The whole exchange just seemed so undergrad to me. Feeling the pressure to go out and drink every night. To hook up blindly with others. Needing to drink in order to have a good time. Verbally competing to prove to others that you're a bigger party animal than they are. That was never really me. But somehow spring quarter, I got tangled up with that kind of company. It was exciting, to be sure. Yet, I'm finding that that's not me at all. Sure, I might be facing a lot more nights in, from here on out. But I can live with that.

Who knew that a conversation with the past could do so much to validate the present? I'm happy with my relationship. And I'm happy with the kind of person I truly am.

No longer doubting. Closure is a wonderful thing.