The Art of Being Compulsive

I can't believe it either. Really. This whole thing did come out of the blue. One minute I am a single, somewhat bitter, 20-something who was beginning to believe that cats would be the only means of companionship after all my eggs dried up and I was left to live off the meager wage of a poor and pathetic server for the rest of my days. And then the next minute I'm...

Gone: Just like that. My room is a museum of my old life. I come home to change my bra, throw my dirty shirt onto the neglected pile of sweaty clothes and then I'm off again in his arms for another solid week.

I feel like I have given new meaning to the idea that I've been swept off my feet. In a space of three weeks I went from Single to Dating, had him meet both sets of parents, took him up to the Farm my dad owns in Upstate New York, fell in love, came back to the City and decided (at 1:30 AM on a week night) that I needed to buy plane tickets to New Zealand to meet his family and friends. Oh, and by the way, I'll be gone a month: spending the Christmas/New Year holidays down there. That all just happened in less than 4 weeks.

What happened? Is it chemistry? Why this guy and not another? I have no clear answer other than I know in my bones that this is exactly what I want to be doing and who I want to be doing it with.

I'm no stranger to impulsiveness: I've done stuff like this in the past, and maybe that's why I'm not as wind blown and freaked out as some other people in my position may be. When I was 23 I decided that I needed to buy a plane ticket to Rochester, New York, and fly up there for 5 days to spend the time with a dancer I had fallen head over heels with. Prior to that I had only known him for a weekend. Only spent a few hours with him. He told me, once I was up there, that he had no intention of dating me after I got back to New York and that I needed to move on. Heart crushing, but I valued his honesty. And felt a deep sense of accomplishment in going.

I decided, at 24, that I needed to see the world. And, rather than discuss what we would do and map out how we would do it and where: I bought two tickets for my sister and I to fly to Thailand for a month. Fuck the rest, we'd make it work, right? And we did.

At 21 I decided that Grad school was not an option, so I drove myself up to Boston, in a borrowed car, to go and audition for theatre companies I had never heard of in the hopes that I would have something to do once I graduated university. I got accepted to Actors Theatre of Louisville in Kentucky (prior to that I had never even considered Kentucky a state worth knowing) and once accepted packed up my life and drove myself down with 2 thousand dollars and a bunch of bags to get me through the 9 month apprenticeship. On my own. I'd never lived outside of New York until then.

I think, as I've gotten older, that the more I think and deliberate about things I could do, the more I feel I can't change. However, if I decide on a whim  to make a change: I'll do it. I'll deal with the repercussions later (and I've found that there never are any negative repercussions: only the feeling of accomplishment and elation). Even when we were deciding about renting a car and going upstate to my Dad's farm, my boyfriend and I decided to just rent the damn car (at 2:30 in the morning) and pick it up at noon (that day) to drive up. Fuck it. Let's just go.

And here I am: only dating the guy for two weeks and I bought the plane tickets to New Zealand.

Because: Fuck it. I want to go.