lucy, the evil, heartless bitch: part five

previously on LtEHB

I'm having trouble trying to recall my thoughts and feelings from this time, because it's hard to believe how deluded I was. Seriously, what the hell was wrong with me?
After I got my grad school applications in and S was convinced I was serious about moving to the US, he decided to come visit me in Commonwealthland. A couple of weeks before he arrived, I got the acceptance to Prestigious U, inviting me to the recruitment activities, which actually overlapped slightly with the time S would be in C'land. He was going to be in my city for 10 days, and then go somewhere else for a few days (I convinced him that if he was going to go all the way to C'land, he should see more than just my city). He tried to get me to go with him to the other place, but I was already freaking out about the idea of having to tell anyone that he was coming to visit and my mum would've had a heart attack if I'd gone off on a trip with some guy I'd met online (not that it was much better just telling her he was visiting). In any case, it turned out that I would be in the US while he was elsewhere, so he changed his flights to go home slightly earlier. In total, we had about 2 weeks of being in the same place.
I guess I haven't mentioned how this whole story fit into the rest of my life. Basically, it didn't; the two were completely separate. I didn't ever tell any of my friends that I was even using IRC, because they would've thought I was weird. When I was spending all my time online, staying up until 3am every night, my mum was really worried about me (understandably) and I did tell her eventually what I was doing and who some of the people I was talking to were, but I didn't tell her anything specific about S. She was constantly getting annoyed because I would always hide the windows I was chatting in (my windows-m reflexes are still pretty quick), as soon as she, or anyone else, came near the computer.
I didn't even tell my closest friend (closest in relative terms; don't picture the closeness of your closest friend) that I was applying to grad school in the US until the last minute. And I told as few people as possible about S visiting. In fact, it worked out quite well that the recruitment stuff was at the same time, because most people who noticed I wasn't around for a while assumed it was all due to that. (I realise I have issues with secrecy)
I couldn't figure out what or how to tell my mum about S and I think it got to within about a month of his visit before she found out. I didn't end up having to figure out what to tell her, though, because in possibly the most embarrassing moment of my life (although there's some close competition at numerous times later in this episode and the next), she found something I'd written to S and accidentally left lying around. Again, what the hell was wrong with me?
She was obviously freaked out and seemed to be convinced that S was coming all that way to murder me. She ended up making me let her come with me to meet S at the airport, although she didn't come right to the arrival gate with me.
This is so hard to write, by the way. But it's making me feel slightly better, in that at least I'm not the same person I was then. If any of this doesn't make sense, it's because I can't bring myself to dwell on it long enough to proofread.
So, in episode 4, I mentioned that I freaked out again. As it got closer to the point where we'd actually meet for the first time, I was getting more and more anxious. Finally, a week or two before he arrived, the scales fell from my eyes and I realised I'd been deluding myself all that time and meeting him wasn't going to make me suddenly feel everything I'd been trying to convince myself I felt. That realisation made me completely freak out, because I'd just spent all this time and effort applying to grad schools in a country I had no reason to move to, other than S, and I was either going to be stuck somewhere I didn't want to be, or I'd have to tell everyone (including the professors who'd written letters for me) that I changed my mind. I can't remember whether I managed to calm down because I'd already gotten into Prestigious U and I decided that was a good enough reason to move to the US, or if I merely deferred my panic in the hopes that I would get in and I wouldn't be left with a choice between Middle of Nowhere State U and having to tell everyone I knew that I was an idiot and didn't really want the thing I'd spent ages convincing them was a really good idea. In any case, at this point my major panic was about having almost committed to moving to the US, before realising the whole thing with S was a mistake. Obviously, I had no idea what to tell S, but I figured that was a short term worry, compared to what I was going to do with the next 5-6 years of my life.
I didn't say anything to S about my epiphany, because, while I wasn't expecting it, I thought it was still possible that meeting him in person would make a difference and I didn't want to disappoint him or ruin his trip any earlier than I had to. If I'd realised early enough that he could conceivably have cancelled the trip, I guess I would have told him, but obviously I'd been avoiding really thinking about it until the last minute. In hindsight, I doubt he would have believed me, anyway.
I should probably say, this realisation didn't quite come out of the blue. Over the previous couple of months, I'd been noticing (and getting bored with) how much of our conversation was made up of variations on a few in jokes that were fun at first, but not enough to sustain months of frequent chatting (at least on my end). There were still long, awkward (again on my end, at least) silences when we talked on the phone, too. I'd dismissed my concerns by comparing my anxiety levels to those during interactions with other people, but I'm pretty sure my lack of anxiety was due to the fact that I didn't have to care about impressing S.
That last week or two between realising I wasn't interested and meeting were pretty painful. S was so excited and happy and I kept trying to balance pretending to be excited, too, and attempting to dampen his enthusiasm by warning that maybe it wasn't going to be the magical fairy tale he wanted.

I was hoping to get to us meeting this time, but I have to finish laundry and pack for going to what seems to be the blogging world's favourite state this weekend. I'm driving, too, so I need some sleep. I forgot to blog about last weekend's first adventure in driving on the wrong side of the road, but it wasn't as much of an adventure as I'd been fearing, really. My main confusion was just between the windscreen wipers and indicators. Luckily it was an automatic car, so my reaching for the gear stick and hitting the door was only a problem when I was stationary.
See you Monday. Maybe I'll finish the meeting story then.