Italy - the land of love, museums, and pasta! What a convenient time to be gluten free, but more importantly, what a wonderful time to be in love. A lot of emotion, discovery, change, and trust has helped me get here. And not just to the airport three hours early, anxiously awaiting the first leg of my flight to Dublin and then to Milan. Here. An independent, confident, masters graduate, young woman who longs to experience the world.
On May 17, 2017, I graduate from Columbia School of Social Work with my Masters in Social Work. For the first time in my life, I had no plan. After graduating from the University of Vermont in 2014, I joined the Peace Corps and moved to Botswana for two years. A year ago, I completed my service and moved to New York to start graduate school. The planner that I am expected to have it all figured out before May 17th. I was wanted a job, an apartment where I could start putting down roots, a great workout routine, extracurricular activities. I longed for normalcy, and my life was anything but this. I felt like my world was falling apart, not knowing what each new day would bring. I got sucked down the rabbit hole of applying for jobs day after day without coming up for a breath of fresh air. I spent a great deal of energy attempting to stay in tact and focused. I found it took my whole being to embrace the uncertainty and the ambiguity life had in store for me. Part of this process of embracing the uncertainty included buying a ticket to Italy.
I've had countless adventures, some of them alone and some of them with a travel partner. I couldn't be more excited to be sharing Italy with Teis. Teis... what an unexpected surprise. It's been 59 days since I've seen my boyfriend of roughly 6 months (depending on how you want to count it), and I couldn't be more excited to break this two month streak by reuniting tomorrow in Italy.
After Sam and I broke up, I was ready to be single and mingle. I downloaded some dating apps (and then immediately deleted most of them) to see what was out there. While Tinder was a self-beauty confidence boost, in the long run, I knew it would only lower the confidence that relies on inner strength and beauty. There are many facets of the self, and while some dating apps helped reinforce my positive body image, I knew the constant shallowness in conversation and connection that Tinder provided would only lower my inner strength - something I've worked hard to achieve during my two years in Peace Corps. The primary app I used was Coffee Meets Bagel, and Teis was the first guy that extended beyond the typical dating app "relationship:" texting banter for a few days, trying to align our schedules, and finally allowing the conversation and potential relationship to disappear. Teis was different. He was confident, funny, and engaging. Needless to say, I was very intrigued and drawn to him.
We went on our first date before he left for a two week work trip in Senegal. It was three weeks until I saw him again, and after that, a beautiful relationship began to flourish. By our third date, we couldn't be apart from each other. We had the type of connection that keeps you up until 1am talking about anything and everything you can think of, with total disregard for time commitments the following morning and the necessity of sleep. The kind of connection where you would sit on the subway for an extra hour after a long day of class or work just to be with them, even if it meant sleeping for a few hours and getting up to start the day again. For the first several months of dating, we resisted commitment. We started dating knowing that he would be traveling in Europe for two months this summer and that I had no idea where I would be past May. We had an expiration date, but decided to live in the moment, take it one day at a time, and continue seeing each other. A few months of spending every night together made it clear that we didn't want to be dating anyone else and that a label of "boyfriend" or "girlfriend" wasn't going to change anything in how we felt about each other or the time we would spend together. Again, who knew what the future would hold, but what we did know is that we wanted the other to be part of it.
I first told Teis I loved him on May 18th. It was the day after he met all the family for my graduation, and he hadn't gone running for the hills. This was a good sign. Teis has a rule where he won't say "I love you" until he's thought it at least three times. On his birthday in early May, Teis got a little tipsy and extremely playful. Tipsy Teis is a lot of fun. Take his fun, energetic, loving personality and multiply it by 20 after a few drinks. It's great. And of course tipsy Teis decided to discuss the meaning of love. He told me about his three time rule and that by this time, he had already thought it countless times. What has been so beautiful and refreshing about my relationship with Teis is that I feel like we are almost always on the same page. Once again, I was right there with him - I was falling hard and fast for Teis, and I was almost certain I was in love. We decided not to say it just yet because it was a conversation that I wanted to have completely sober.
For the next two weeks, I really tried to get down to what love means to me. I thought about past relationships and what those felt like and even read articles about love. When my mom came to visit for graduation, she saw through the walls I was putting up. She recognized my resistance based on past hurt and challenged me to trust in the beautiful relationship I had with Teis. She was brutally honest and told me to stop denying it because I was most certainly in love. This was evident because every chance I would get, I would talk about Teis and our future. I have a lot of love to share with the world, and I want to share this love with Teis. Telling Teis I love him has done nothing but provide strength and happiness to our relationship.
So here I am, in love and (almost) in Italy.
