Trip Report

I have about 50,000 things to write about since my trip to visit K, and not nearly enough time to write it. So I'll just start writing and see what comes out.

The trip started at 2:18 on Saturday morning when I got an automated call from the airline saying that my flight was canceled. They automatically rescheduled me to the same flight for the next day. I was not about to lose an entire precious day with K when we only had three to begin with. Not without a fight, anyway.

The East Coast was slammed with a snow storm. K's city got 23 inches of it. The story of my Travel Day from Hell is way too long to tell here, but here's a quick summary: I drove to the airport twice, flew standby to the larger airport in my state, only to find out mid-flight that my next flight to K's city had been canceled. No planes landed in K City all day. I got a seat on a flight to a nearby airport, which strangely had not been grounded. Under a time crunch to get to the train station on time, I took a taxi from the airport to the train station. The snow started getting bad and the taxi spun out on the highway and hit a guard wall. By a miracle, it was not damaged and we continued on to the train station. I got there in time to take the train... but it was full and I couldn't get a ticket. I had to get a ticket for the later train at 11:00 pm, which would get me to K City after midnight. The train was delayed an hour, so I didn't get in til 2:00 am. It was another half hour til I could get a cab to K's. (She doesn't have a car, and I told her not to wait up for me.)

At 2:30 am I finally got to her place. For all my troubles, I had gained maybe 9 hours of time with her.

It was worth it.

If I thought I was in love with her before, that feeling is ten times stronger now. I'm scared of how intense my feelings are. We talked and talked and talked and did other stuff that people who are dating do. At first she was still confused about her feelings for me, then she wasn't, then she was again. I don't want to go into too much detail, because this blog is about my issues, not hers.

She kept saying how weird life is; how she never expected this. I asked her if this meant we were dating, and she said something like, "I guess... I guess I have to visit you next." Before this trip I had been so preoccupied with all the other barriers to us getting together, I hadn't realized how difficult the long distance thing would be. We live 700 miles apart. I was already missing her before I left.

At 3:30 on Wednesday morning I had to get up to take a bus to the airport for a 6:00 am flight. (I had moved my return date back a day because of the Saturday debacle.) As I said goodbye to her at 3:50 am, I used the L-word. I had been wanting to say it for a while, and that was my last chance. She was half awake, but she said it back to me without any hesitation.

When I got to the airport I sent her a text to let her know I got there. Her three-word response melted my heart: I miss you.

Since I've got back home I've felt very insecure and clingy. I miss her more than I thought I would. I keep wanting to tell her things about my day. She's becoming primary to me and that makes me nervous. It's hard for me to accept that someone as beautiful and wonderful as she is could love me. This is not just my usual insecure neuroses. After all, she's not attracted to men. She has trouble defining her attraction to me and worries about hurting me. I told her I'm willing to take the risk.

So in some ways my visit hasn't settled anything, other than to intensify our feelings (whatever those are.) I still don't know how to refer to her. Are we dating? Is she my girlfriend? She probably plays the role of my girlfriend, since I have no interest in dating anyone else.

I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. For her to tell me definitively that this isn't going to work. It hasn't happened yet, so I guess I'm grateful for that. Her attention continues to surprise me.

Random thought: Isn't it weird how different someone looks from 2 inches away than when they're two feet away?