Continued

Okay, so I'm still up, b/c I came back from Nikolai's about an hour ago. The night was really cool. Well, he and Brooke's boyfriend "Ali" are roommates, and so me, Brooke, and Ali were going to have a dinner for him. So I ended up deciding, since Brooke and Ali were doing some other things, that after I made my buffalo wings (Mom's recipe), I would see if I could go over to the house early. So I called Nikolai, and went over there. He was packing, so I kept him company. Then he had to run a quick errand, and so he let me use his laptop (which was where the last entry came from). Then just as I sent it, he came back with a friend of his (male) who was there for a little bit, and left maybe 30 minutes later. Not long after Nikolai and the friend came to the house, Brooke and Ali showed up. We ate the wings, which Nikolai (as well as everyone else) loved. Maybe I'll observe my mom cook more often, from now on.

Later on, we had a beer/champagne/orange cleaner fight (don't ask), and so we were all beer soaked and gross. Nikolai and I ducked out of the fight at some point, and got to talking in another room. Then a couple of the neighbors came over, so that was cool. Then they left. At that point I asked if he was ready to go to bed, since he was exhausted with all the preparation for the trip. So he said that he wasn't yet, since he was used to being up really late, and he knew I was too. So we talked for another hour or so, then I got up, told him I would wash dishes since I had brought my pan over the house, and then I would leave. So he kept me company while I did that. Then I went home.

So apparently I will be the last of his Cincinnati/American friends to see him before he leaves, since I will be taking him to the airport. Apparently, Brooke was supposed to take him, but she had something come up. So she was going to take him even earlier than he needed to be there, but he remembered that I offered to take him, and so he decided to take me up on it. Come to find out, he hadn't taken me up on it before b/c he thought it would conflict with my classes, since unlike them, I'm still doing actual coursework. But I told him that it's no problem b/c I don't have Monday classes and my grad assistant work is primarily in the morning. So there you go.

I was talking to one my best friends earlier about what it means to truly get over someone, since she recently experienced a relationship breakup. After all I've been through, I think I finally know what that means. You're truly over someone when you're not thinking about them, when you're not angry with them, you aren't dwelling on what went wrong, and you are no longer jaded because the relationship didn't go the way you wanted it to.

Five years after the initial rejection, I really believe I'm finally over Alex. Yes it took me half a decade, and I was into him for a quarter of my life, but whatever. Even if I think about him (usually b/c someone else brings him up), I'm not angry at him or what he did. Besides the fact that I am finally getting my positivity and optimism back, earlier I realized another marker of getting over him. I forgot his birthday. No seriously, I forgot his birthday. Up until now, I always remembered his birthday, even if I pretended not to acknowledge it. But it came this past Wednesday, and it passed, and I didn't even think about it. At all. It just occurred to me earlier tonight, and I had to laugh.

Probably the only reason why it even occurred to me was because I added Nikolai's birthday to my mental calendar of friends' birthdays...his will be very easy to remember b/c it's three days after my father's, although no it's not the same year, of course :-). Just like I thought, he is 28, and so that makes him almost 4 years older than me. He's probably the oldest person I've been into, not just in terms of raw years, but also in terms of age difference. I have always been into guys close to my age. Really close to my age. Like usually within a year or two. Maybe I'm getting older, and since I'm getting older, age differences don't mean so much. Just so long as he's not old enough to be my daddy.

I think that I'm happy right now, not just b/c of Nikolai, but b/c I'm beginning to see more clearly what I want from my life, what I want from a man, and for the first time in, like, ever, I believe that I can actually get it.