What do I do when every "no"
turns into "maybe"?

- Vienna Teng, Stray Italian Greyhound

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I stood at my doorstep as he walked back to his car.  There was still one thing left to do before I called it a night.

"HEY!" I called out after him.  He turned around, alert.  I yelled, "I like you!"

He grinned, "I like you, too!"

"COOL, BYE!"

And as I unlocked my door to my house, I could hear him laughing behind me.

Time to review my resolutions from the start of 2013!

* FINALLY boss the GRE by the end of Spring semester! lol
* Apply to grad schools at the end of this year… Basically the stuff I was planning on doing in 2012 up until my job offer at Scripps! lol no bro, got a job
* Grow out my hair!!! oh jesus christ it's finally past my clavicle but certainly not as long as i intended when i wrote this. i meant like mermaid hair. but technically true?!
* Save more $$$! I THINK THIS WAS OK COS I HAD MONEY LEFTOVER AFTER GRAD
* Finally, finally, finally… go to Disneyland! omg dude hell yea and it was the best time ever
* Stay in contact with my Merced BFF’s after graduation.  INDEED!! i just sent all my housemates christmas presents in the mail, i see omer regularly, and i talk to morrell on the phone all the time!
* Get my post-graduation life together!  Whewww. who again is the fine-ass lady with the full-time job in san diego? oh right, that's me
* Road trip, anyone? <3 uuhh i make a lot of spazzy trips to LA, but i totes been flying more than driving lulz. i think trip to NYC for NYE and frequent flights up north count, i don't even care
* Should this year finally be the year that I lose weight? lol uh, year's weight time course: so i lost 20 then i gained 20 then i lost 10 then gained 5 lul
* Take care of my electronics so I don’t need to buy replacement anything! t__t guess who broke her laptop and her portable hard drive over summer LUL
* Bowl more  - BOWLED.... TWICE THIS YEAR???? aka fail

* Keep up my development as a travelbug

-+-

Within a few days after Jacob left, it was remarkably easy to transition into friends.

He told me about the girl he liked back in Georgia.  He kept me updated on his ventures in pursuing her, and even asked me for advice about her.  We even talked about that strange period between Thanksgiving and Christmas, where we both agreed on his observation, "At the time, I didn't know how to be friends with you.  It seemed very black and white between us."  We agreed that now that we know how to be friends, things are a lot better now.

Sometime afterwards, I also went on a first date.  Then I went on a second date, and a third date, and a fourth date, and a fifth date.

When I decided that it was going well -- really well, actually -- I told Jacob about him, and he was excited for me.  In fact, by the third date, I already could not stop talking about him.  I could not stop talking about the strange lack of red flags, the weirdly perfect chemistry.  It was a genuine first for me in years.

Maybe it was karma, because I kept giving Jacob a hard time about how much he was head over heels about his girl.  No matter how much I insisted, "No, no, no, this is actually really cool and new and refreshing for me," Jacob still teased right back, "Christa, you get infatuated just as quickly as I do!"

-+-

* 23 Dec 2011: That awkward moment when you wonder if your breakfast burrito has RNase. Answer is probably yes.

* 23 Dec 2011: I'd try to compare us, but there is no comparison. We're on completely different levels.

* 24 Dec 2011: Just woke up from a dream that I was on a hijacked plane, and in the pursuit of saving the day, had to pepper spray a dolphin in the face.

Fondly remembering what you did for me last Christmas. I'm thankful. I wish I could let you know that I'm not alone anymore. #ex

— Christa C. (@merryChrista) December 26, 2011

* 25 Dec 2011: Had a rewarding hike today with my siblings. Spent my Christmas chasing waterfalls!

* 31 Dec 2011: Dude, is it still empathy if it's for yourself, but in the past? lol

* 11 Jan 2012: "Don't let anyone anchor you down, Christa. You're going to do great things."

* 19 Jan 2012: "I HOPE PHUC IS STILL TAKING CARE OF YOU BECAUSE I HOPE HE DIDNT FORGET THAT I WILL STEAL YOU AWAY FROM HIM!" That awkward moment where...

* 15 Feb 2012: "It's not you, it's me" ... "oh but j/k actually it IS you trollolololol"

* 23 Feb 2012: On my wall in my room, a handwritten reminder reads, "DON'T BURN OUT! It's okay to take a break!"

* 24 Feb 2012: "I'd like to make an appointment for a super nap, please."

"I would like to wholeheartedly accept your invitation." I still can't believe I'm really going to work at "The Hub of Research!"

— Christa C. (@merryChrista) March 9, 2012

* 18 Mar 2012: Thank you, Random Elderly Man at McDonald's, for buying me a free small soda. You have restored my faith in mankind.

* 30 Mar 2012: I need to start dating again JUST so I can start using all these amazing "Dinner for Two" coupons. Yeah, I got my priorities straight.

* 3 Apr 2012: On Tuesdays, my professor and I ride the bus together. "Tuesdays with MGO," but they're less sad than with Morrie.

* 7 Apr 2012: Invited to represent UC Merced at Washington, DC. Life gets more and more extraordinary every single day.

* 28 May 2012: "So many paths that wind and wind... when just the art of being kind is all this sad world needs." - Ella Wheeler-Wilcox, Poet

* 3 Jan 2013: I decided it was more important to let my mom nap than to wail on her for all the Punch Buggies on the freeway. I'm a good daughter.

* 5 Jan 2013: Leaving for Anaheim tomorrow morning with amazing company. Time for wishes to come true. #disneyland

* 8 Feb 2013: Just got a tutoring job at #UCMerced! I have until I start in two weeks to become a master of embryogenesis. NBD

* 16 Feb 2013: A good night is one where we're all arguing about the best strategy for viral transfection of epithelial cells. This is pretty nerdy.

* 21 Feb 2013: I don't talk to my mom over the phone much, but when I called her today, we had a heated discussion about Neopets. Good day. #family

Confirmed: Going back to Scripps this summer. Same internship & same lab as last year -- they liked me so much, they wanted me back. Win!

— Christa C. (@merryChrista) March 14, 2013

* 18 Mar 2013: Just purchased my cap & gown, glowing with both anxiety and excitement. The salesman laughed, "What a happy grad!"

* 22 May 2013: About to fulfill a lifelong dream: I'm now en route to New York City! Huzzah!

* 24 Sep 2013: Uh, anyone catch that Bones episode where a bobcat feeds on a human corpse? All I could think was: GO BOBCATS, YEAH UC MERCED

* 20 Nov 2013: Difficult decision: guy has unattractive/arrogant personality, but he knows how to raise bees and harvest his own honey. #HoneyLoverProblems

"This is a direct flight to San Diego. The good thing about this flight is that, well, it's going to San Diego." - JetBlue flight attendant

— Christa C. (@merryChrista) January 3, 2014

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Okay, just decided on another New Year's Resolution: Tweet more in 2014! Because this was more entertaining than I anticipated.

I filtered myself a lot more and tweeted a LOT less more after my visit to Washington, D.C. because there was this really weird phase after UC in DC where politicians and the UC campuses were suddenly paying attention to my Twitter.  Since I was one of only two undergrads at UC in DC, when we had the "Social Media" discussion during orientation, I realized I was probably the only person there in Twitter's target age range.  "Oh god if I don't tweet about UC in DC, no one will," I explained to Team UC Merced -- which ended up being practically true.

After that, I felt like my Twitter should be more professional, and I put on my Professional Hat every time I tweeted for months.  Since it's almost two years later, I'm going to hope that they care less now, and just Tweet about whatevah I want.  lol!

Happy Tweeting!

Watchin’ a movie,
you get closer to me…
Oh, this has disaster written all over it.

- Relient K, Disaster

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“All I ever wanted, all I ever needed is here in my arms.  Words are very unnecessary; they can only do harm…”

“Enjoy the Silence” by Depeche Mode has grown into one of very few songs that inspire me to immediately change the radio station.  It’s a stunning song that I know all the lyrics to, but now it reminds me too much of a boy standing on a karaoke stage, shyly trying to impress me.

While it was a month to remember, I can’t say that it’s a month that I’ll particularly miss.  At first, my month with him was refreshingly different – what was I supposed to make of this vegan guitarist in a dark metal band?  This guy that makes a living by advocating for LGBT rights in San Diego county, and spends his free time at feminist rallies?

What I first recognized as an incredibly admirable passion quickly proved itself to be a pervasive, chronic anger.  We would be in the middle of a movie date when, if any hint of politics appeared in the movie, he would exclaim, “Fuck democrats, fuck Kennedy, fuck Obama!”  We would stand outside bars so he could smoke a cigarette, while I passively listened to him bash on all Christians as ignorant people blindly buying into archaic propaganda.  He would show me pictures of himself burning the American Flag on the Fourth of July, yelling out, “Happy July 4^th, motherfuckers!”

I spent a few weeks giving him the benefit of the doubt, insisting that I was still getting to know him.  However, on our fifth date, he drunkenly kissed me, “I love you.”  My eyes widened in shock and “uhhhhhhh WTF?” I found this hugely sobering, and throughout my New Year’s trip in NYC, I spent time re-evaluating my willingness to spend an indefinite amount of time with a boy consumed by anger.  My willingness to commit to someone who seemed to be incapable of seeing the world in pink… in silver linings as I do.

I decided that I wanted to continue seeing the world as a beautiful place.  Two days before my 23rd birthday, and two days before our one-month anniversary, I met him at the heart of Balboa Park, and I said those words that would ultimately free me, yet would ultimately render me unable to listen to Depeche Mode’s “Enjoy the Silence” without thinking of the boy consumed by anger:

“I don’t think we’re going to work out.”

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“How are you and Jon?” Jacob inquired as he conjured up a bowl of miso soup.

It was the day before my birthday, and Jacob and I spent a large part of winter break dodging each other.  I spent the first week of his winter break absolutely despising him.  Maybe it was to protect myself, but I was letting myself grow to hate him.

“Guess who’s been in town for a week and I still haven’t heard from him?” I bitterly pouted at Julie and Omer while getting boba a few days before Christmas.  After everything that happened at Thanksgiving, and after not hearing a word from him since then, I considered it all proof of my theory that he didn’t care about me anymore.  That I was just a footnote in his life.  Less than a remnant.  Less than a speck of dust.

With extraordinary hesitation, it wasn’t until Christmas Eve that Jacob and I finally agreed to meet with each other.  I was planning on socking him square in the jaw as a Christmas present to myself, but I sucked it up and met him solely to give him the Christmas present that I bought for him weeks ago.  We sat across from each other, playing with our food and making awkward small talk.  At some point, he admitted that there’s a girl back in Georgia that he had a crush on.  Jon and I had still been at our peak at this point, and I smiled, “I’ve started seeing someone too.”

He grinned, and it was the most sincere smile that he had given me since before Thanksgiving.  “Oh, yeah?  Tell me about him.”

From there, our awkwardness eased up, and while I was still ambivalent, I ceased my longing to punch him in the face.  We spent a few more hours just hanging out and chatting about our lives, and we realized we could really make this work.  This thing called a friendship between us.

With that, I left San Diego to spend Christmas with my parents and to spend New Year’s with my sister in NYC (which also needs its own post soon!).  Two weeks later, Jacob and I were both back in town.  Everyone else was busy on the eve of my 23^rd birthday, but Jacob agreed to spend midnight with me.  I came over, and we filled a bowl of hot water to make some miso soup.  That’s when he asked, “How are you and Jon?”

I scrunched my face into a bitter expression, and squeaked, “Ummm, not good!”

He tilted his head with concern, “Oh, no.  Things are worse?”

I said with a nervous giggle, “Umm... I broke up with him!”

I explained what happened, and we spent some time chatting about that.  Then, we started watching TV together.  Just a few dumb episodes of Robot Chicken, sitting side-by-side as friends.  Then we started leaning towards each other.  Then we started sitting closer to each other.  Then he put his head on my shoulder.  Then I put my head on his.  Then I lied in the nook of his arm, with my arm wrapped around him.  Then he tickled me.  Then I kissed him.

The rest was history.  Or, more accurately, it was history repeating itself.

During Thanksgiving and even when I was in Atlanta, things felt so different between us.  We held ourselves back, and everything felt so much less… real.  We, Jacob especially, didn’t want to create false expectations and hype up false hopes.

In relationships that I feel particularly invested in, I’ve found that I have an impediment in accurately assessing how much the other person cares about me.  As a protective strategy, I set my expectations low, and I underestimate how much people value me.  Therefore, when people begin to make tactics to dissuade me from thinking that they care about me, those tend to work extremely effective on me.  Sometimes, too effectively.  There's the boy that started seeing me less and less before he moved away to Kansas - I quickly moved on, while he continued to send me longing texts for another six months.  There's the boy who I was head over heels about for a year and a half, and when I moved on from him, he finally admitted that he loved me.  For Jacob, perhaps it didn't work too effectively considering our circumstances of age and distance, but enough that I was shocked to discover that seven months after we first met, he actually still adored me.

In fact, Jacob did dissuade my affections so effectively that over the course of time, the moment that I decided I was sick of Jacob was when he reassured me during Thanksgiving break, “I care about you.  I’ll always care about you.”  To me, that sounded so painfully meditated, like he had said it to a million other girls before me.  At the time, it seemed like it was such a transparent lie that I entirely cast him aside.  It was clear to me that he didn’t care about me anymore.  Ironically, it was when he assured me that he cared about me, that I wanted to be done with caring about him.

(freakin’ girls, amirite?)

So especially after all that effort to let our mutual attachment fade away, I don’t know what it was that happened after that kiss, and I don’t know if Jacob knows either.  Maybe it was because we proved we were both fully capable of moving on from each other, maybe it was because both of us already had all of our cards out on the table and knew what our expectations were.  Maybe it was because we felt so tired of spending so long holding ourselves back, or maybe it was just because we spent all week drinking and our inhibitions were lowered.  Either way, after that kiss, we let ourselves crash so hard for each other that seven days later, when he flew away for spring semester, it broke our hearts a little all over again.

But at least for seven days, our winter felt like all those months apart never happened.  They felt like he never flew away to Georgia at the end of August.  He rested his head on my chest to listen to my heartbeat, and he held me like we belonged to each other.  And for one week, we did.  It was practically the "Scripps Summer 2.0" that we jokingly talked about all those months ago.  Each morning, I woke up to him tightening his embrace and whispering to me, “I missed this.”  We saw his friends who I used to see during summer, and Jacob would spend the nights asking me to sit closer to him so that he wouldn’t have to stop holding me.

One night, we were in the pool of his backyard, where he trolled me for not knowing how to swim – he took me to the deep end of the pool, and carried me around as I screamed, terrified.  He dunked my head in the water feature of his pool, drenching my face and hair, and I sputtered and yelled, “You ASSHOLE, I hate you!!”

“Oh, you love me,” he laughed.  I flashed back to that day in Atlanta, where I was trying to decide whether I should tell him the truth that I truly, truly, truly did.  That I hated the fact that he’s not ready to settle down, that he’s the perfect package for me, that I couldn’t remember the last time I felt this way about anyone, that I wanted to go the distance with him.

This time around, I just slapped him and laughed, “Oh, shut up!”

As always, there were moments of drama scattered here and there, but other than that, it was truly a beautiful week.  Every year, I’ve celebrated my birthday as a weeklong celebration, full of little ways where I get a little extra spoiled – ring in January 7^th with 7 days of Christa.  I always thought that this year was going to be different.  But little did I know, I still got my 7 days of celebration after all.  I celebrated by waking up every morning next to him, and falling asleep next to him every night (albeit at varying levels of drunkenness).  Maybe it was dumb to let history repeat itself, and maybe we bit off more than we can chew.  Maybe someday I’ll regret falling for him all over again.  Nonetheless, until I'm forced to revel in my stupidity, it was one of the best birthday weeks ever.

On our last night together, I helped him pack his things and clean his room before flying back to Georgia.  In gratitude for my help, he exclaimed, “Thank you so much, Christa.  Oh, I love you.”

My attention was piqued and my eyes dilated at three certain words, but my reflex was to ignore it.  Protect yourself, Christa.  I laughed, “Oh, I know you do.”

Then I looked at him, and I decided I wasn’t going to let this opportunity pass.  You know what?  Fuck it.  I walked over and I sat down on the bed in front of him, and I smiled, “But seriously… I love you too, man.”

We smiled at each other, and I held his hands in mine.  I may never be able to realize those words romantically, but I equally meant it as his friend.  Realizing that he was flying away in less than four hours, I asked him for all I really hoped for in our future.  At this point, there was only one thing that I truly wanted behind all of the love, affection, and attraction: “Don’t be a stranger, okay?”

He took my face in his hands and kissed me, “Of course, girl.”

We woke up in the morning, and Jacob insisted that I sat in the backseat of his dad's car with him, so that we could sit next to each other.  We quietly sat with his head on my shoulder the entire drive to the airport, except for one instant where he whispered, “Are you sure you don’t want to come with me?”  As we dropped him off, I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him, repeating, “Remember, don’t be a stranger!  Keep in touch, okay?”

He smiled again, “Of course, girl!  Bye!”

“Bye!” I waved as I got back into his dad’s car.  As I closed the passenger door behind me, Jacob and I caught one last glance at each other, waving before he turned around towards the terminal and before his dad drove away.

When we made that last second of eye contact, I could see the sadness in his smile and the longing in his eyes.  I wonder if he could see the same in mine.

All I know is that I will remember that moment for a long time.  The final instant in our seven days together.  The moment that my heart broke all over again.

Yet, if that was the price to pay for a week of unbridled adoration, of history on repeat... then I was glad for it.