My tears dry on their own

Yes, dear readers, the long-awaited weekend up in Oregon has come and gone and it’s time for a recap.

I don’t really know the best way to sum up the weekend. I guess I could say, parts of the weekend would have been romantic if it were a romantic situation. As it was, the weekend was at times relaxing, at times super fun, and at times emotionally tumultuous (at least, internally).

I flew into Eugene at about 1 pm on Friday and C. picked me up at the airport. It was a good, smooth flight and I was in a very upbeat mood. We got in the car and began our drive to the coast. It was a cold but sunny and gorgeous day, and we chatted away as farmland and forest whizzed past us. I felt this overwhelming feeling of calm and felt very very far away from my life and my everyday stress.

We stopped to have lunch at this small coast town about an hour from Eugene called Florence. We were the only people at the restaurant when we arrived and got a table by the window with a view of the water. We shared a bottle of wine and had chowder and fish and chips, then browsed at my favorite candy/taffy/gift shop in Florence before we got back on the road.

Once we got to Yachats — pronounced Yaw-hots, or as C. likes to call it, “the ‘Chats” (pronounced “the Hots” — I can’t even type it without giggling), we made our rounds to pick up food & drink. We bought four bottles of wine, some salmon and sangria ingredients. When we got to the house, it was almost sunset so we quickly opened a bottle of wine, poured ourselves each a glass and rushed out just in time to watch the sun set over the water. During the sunset, C. put his arm around me and kissed me for the first time that day.

We headed back to the house, where instead of cooking the salmon as we had planned, we decided to start with the sangria. I don’t know if you’ve gathered this from my other posts, dear readers, but SF is a bit of a lightweight. I had two cups of sangria and wow, the sangria kicked my butt. Anyway, it was only about 8 pm when we ended up drunk and in the bedroom. I’ll spare you all the gory details, but let’s just say that the bedroom part of the trip certainly did not disappoint.

Of course, not content to leave things be, I somehow brought up yet another DTR and the convo went something like this:
SF: I have feelings for you, I can’t help it.
C.: I’m sorry, I can’t reciprocate your feelings.

Not my finest moment, and not the highlight of the weekend. But more about that later.

Anyway, despite what it sounds like, that convo didn’t kill the night. There was more wine, more fun, some movie watching.

But the next day, all the good and the bad of that night caught up with me. I woke up feeling hungover in only the way that red wine can accomplish, and also emotionally hungover and feeling embarrassed/upset about the previous night’s conversation. We spent a good part of the morning just laying in bed snuggling (and then some) and then relocated to the couch and watched movies pretty much all day. It was raining outside and it was actually quite refreshing to have nowhere to be, nothing to do. In the late afternoon his parents arrived, C. and I played Scrabble then went out to dinner and watched another movie then he fell asleep on the couch and I retired to my own room. But all day this icky feeling from the prior night just wouldn’t go away.

That night I snuck into C.’s room when I woke up in the middle of the night … very fun.

The next morning, C. got up and cooked us all bacon & eggs. Then he and I headed back to Eugene. It had been snowing and the drive was like a winter wonderland — all foresty and blanketed in white. It was absolutely beautiful and we were both in good spirits. We had lunch at the airport cafe, and then we said goodbye. He hugged me, gave me a kiss and a soulful look (like only he can do) and walked out to his car.

I then had several hours to stay in the airport where my flight was delayed. I wanted nothing more than to be home at this point. I was physically and emotionally exhausted, and I felt a bit like a string that was close to snapping. They were threatening to cancel the flight, and for an hour or two I sat there, anxious over my two choices – 1) making C. pick me up at the airport and bring me back to his apartment when all I wanted was to put some space between us and clear my head, or 2) calling my parents and confessing to them that I had been in & around town all weekend and hadn’t told them, much less seen them. Um…not ideal. Luckily my flight finally took off and I got my bleary-eyed self back to my apartment at about 12:30 a.m.

So, positive things: I got to relax some, I got some long anticipated nooky, I got to see a beautiful beach sunset and snowy forest, I had some great (but deadly) sangria, I got to enjoy C.’s company.

Not-so-positive things: for better or for worse, I am a quintessential girl about all things related to the opposite sex, and I shed tears more than once over the past 48 hours (once in the airport bathroom – in hindsight I blame extreme tiredness and, I realize now, PMS – a lethal combo). But as today has gone on, clearer heads have prevailed. I realize that I have been projecting all sorts of expectations and hopes and desires onto C. But here’s the thing: he’s not the love of my life. He’s not even the same guy that was my high school sweetheart. He’s — well, a guy. Sure, he’s a guy I have history with. He’s a guy I seem to have amazing chemistry with — 10 years ago and now. He’s a guy who knows me, who I am comfortable with, who gets me. But this doesn’t mean that he’s my future.

It’s weird how we’ve fallen into a little pattern over the past month. We text each other random thoughts, we chat online during the day. We had been endlessly discussing this trip. But now that this trip has come and gone, that both of us know where we stand, and that there is no plan to see each other in the near future, it seems to have lost its urgency. I can talk to him, and we’re friends, but I know we won’t be more than that.

It’s funny – for Christmas I bought C. the book Eat Pray Love and he has been reading it and loving it. He joked last week that he thought he’d write his own male version and asked me what I wanted my name to be in the memoir. When I asked him, “I’d be in your memoir?” he said that yes, since everything that fell apart in his marriage over the last 2 months, what happened between us would be a good starting point. I commented, “yes, it has the elements of a good story.” C. agreed, “And there are still plenty of chances to screw things up or make it better, just like any good story.”

But as it turns out, this great-story-in-the-making, in reality …

Maybe not so much.