To say that life has been a whirlwind recently is an understatement. I feel like I've been strapped into the cockpit of a race car in the Indy 500 these past few weeks. Immediately after getting back from a round of nanny duty, as I've stated, my FWB arrived in town and has been here for nearly two weeks ever since. Life has been turbulent ever since: boyfriend, finals, stress, work, lots of major life decisions. I can't even begin to sort them out. If feel so in over my head right now, and so overwhelmed.
This is not to say it has not been WONDERFUL having the FWB here. This is the longest stretch of time I have had him in my presence and the more I'm around him, the more I learn about him and the more I like him and feel a real complicity with him. He does the dishes and teases me by throwing wine corks from the bottles he opens at dinner at me, he gives me hugs and we talk about everything and everything. There are no awkward pauses and even in the silence there is comfort.
But I feel like we're also skirting around the same subject. He's brought up my past relationships and we've chatted about our pasts while drifting off to sleep holding hands. He is a radiator! I curl beside him and turn the space heaters off at night or else I have to kick off the comforter. He, like me, I have discovered, had his first real love in his late teens, but then he took off for New Zealand and that ended. Like me, he dated casually through the rest of his twenties. And voilà, we're here.
I am stressed because I also have a sudden job offer working for an American luxury goods company here in Paris, but it would be a huge salary cut from my nanny job and it would lock me into France until February 2014. Combine this with possibly considering wanting to be wherever FWB is and intense doubt about my future and I am a train wreck. He know about my interviews because he's been here and I've discussed it all with him just in terms of what it would mean about quitting my nanny job ( which LORD, I would love to do right now) but I do not know if I can swing it financially. I'd be dropping from 1600 EURO a month to 1500 USD, which in Paris is no small deal. I'd have more freedom to go and see him, but possibly risk not being able to pay debts back home, let alone rent in this city. Oh who the HELL knows anymore? I certainly do not and I want to rip my hair out.
The other problem is that I do not know how to bring up the subject of U-S and the US of A with the FWB. It's still early, oh so early, to talk about being serious. This is not, again, to say that I do not want to be serious with him. I admit that I do. I would not have gone to the mat in December about U-S if I did not think I could have a relationship with him. At the same time, I am extremely wary of making decisions based soley on a guy. He'll know about the VIE and NYC soon, but is rather, this week, of the mentality that if he doesn't get a VIE he'll ¨find other things to do here¨ in the meanwhile. And then I got more of the longterm plan out of him Wednesday.
We were eating dinner at my place when I told him we should celebrate his last set of exams EVER when he laughed and replied ¨Oh, maybe not ever;¨ and then explained to me he'd like to do an MBA later on somewhere in North America, perhaps in Canada at McGill. Either way, it looks like he wants to end up in North America for a chunk of his life.
He's been a little less touchy-feely this week and it has me worried that he's losing interest and less invested than I am...that he's a bit afraid of getting too close to me. Sometimes I see it in his humor, in the way he vaguely answers certain questions, or the use of titles. I was at an end of class wine mixer with him and his classmates on Tuesday evening when I met a friend of his, C, and C's Canadian girlfriend, S, (what is it with these French-North American couples? anyway...) but I adored them both and S and I hit it off right away. She's a runner and we both rock out to Céline Dion and are fully bilingual and make pancakes. I'm looking forward to hanging out with her! Her boyfriend, C, is in Switzerland and she's in Paris, so they do distance, but they TOO met right before C took off for a year to do this insane travel master. I suggested she and I start a club of Significant Other's Met Before the OIV MSc in Wine Management. We both laughed. But to her and C my FWB presented me as the GF and to others just a friend. I was so confused.
But then when we're alone, FWB clearly talks about how we are together.
GAH CAN MY BRAIN JUST SHUT UP AND RELAX AND GO WITH IT ALL?
I feel so vulnerable. I'm sure he feels just as vulnerable too, which is maybe why he's backed off a little this week, combined with stress from exams and knowing he'll leave Paris on Monday night. His family arrives Saturday morning while I'll be stuck in Fontain-effing-bleau (FML) but I'll see them on Monday during the day before they all, FWB included, leave on Monday night.
Then I do not know when I'll see him again. I'm tempted to go down on the first of February, my birthday weekend, seeing as I turn 25 on the 31st of this month. Speaking of which...HOW THE HELL AM I HALFWAY THROUGH MY TWENTIES ALREADY!? Mother effer!
I am going to go insane this year with all that is on my plate, I do not know if I can handle it all. Stress stress stress stress stress. It's like all the pieces of the puzzle are continuously changing shape so I can never put the puzzle together.
At first I had one ¨definite¨ this fall, which was that I wanted to stay here. It was the only thing I knew. Now I'm beginning to wonder if my one definite is that I want to keep my FWB, but I can't say yet what the stakes of that would be and if I'm willing to risk those stakes. I'm afraid of that, quite honestly. And I'd need to talk to him about it, but I need to not cross that bridge until I get there and just calm down and see where this goes, which for me, the obsessional planner, is hard. I suppose this is my karmic lesson. But I know I'd risk scaring him away, which is not what I want to do. So I'm going to have to sit back and breathe. Ok, just breathe. In and out and in and out. Breathe.
So, to sum it all up, the set of decisions that will need to be made in this complicated year of 2013 are the following:
1. France or the US?
2. Work or Masters in Interpretation?
3. Just how serious is this relationship with the FWB and where is it potentially going?
4. Just WTF am I doing with my life?
5. Also....AM I OUT OF MY FREAKIN' MIND? I feel like it.
Où est-ce que mon coeur me pousse?
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