My Love Stories: PhD and ME!

Y2K brought about many great things in my life. It was a new decade full of new possibilities. I was a young free-spirited college student who was enjoying freedom miles away from home. I had just begun to take classes in my major and was extremely excited about it. I had landed a coveted internship with a leading corporation in my field of interest and I had met a man that would forever redefine the meaning of Love to me and for me.

I first met PhD during my junior year of college. He was finishing up his last year at the university as an engineering major. I had heard stories about him long before I met him. The stories were about a guy on campus that was extremely handsome and equally smart, but I had never seen him nor met him. That was, until a late winter's evening in the "Big Easy." We were on a school break and coincidentally PhD and I ended up in the same city. We met, exchanged contact information and the rest is history. After meeting him, I totally understood why he was such an enigma for so long!

Our first telephone conversation lasted 2 hours! We hit it off immediately and talked on the phone like little kids until 2am knowing good and well, that we both had class bright and early the next morning. We had so much to talk about and so many things in common; our similarities were uncanny. Over the course of the semester, we remained in contact, but being that he was preparing for graduation he didn't have much time to spare. Every free moment that he had, we communicated...but it wasn't much. The end of the semester came, he graduated and embarked on a 5 year stint in the Mid-West to get his PhD, I left campus for an internship in the South, and our communication seemed to have died off. That was until a stroke of fate landed us in the same city at the same time for a month at the beginning of the summer.

The month that he was in town for training, we spent every day together. From lunch dates, to dinner dates and long walks and intense conversations in between, our romance was budding and our bond had begun to form. This was the first time in my life that I ever experienced someone's genuine interest in me and my life. He seemed completely enthralled and interested in the stories of my youth, my family and my quest for a purpose driven life. He kept me laughing with his incredible sense of humor and spoiled me rotten. Time definately flies when you're having fun; that month came and went faster than ever.

Being without him drove me crazy, and vice versa. We counted down to the days that we were able to see each other again...which were mainly weekends. We made sure to make every minute that we were together count. It was obvious to everyone around us that we were a match made in heaven. From bar-be-que's to comedy shows, and everything else in between, we had a ball together.

At the time, I just thought it was a strong like that I had for PhD. It wasn't until months later that I realized that what I was feeling wasn't just like, it was love. Everything about him made me love him. From his quirkiness to his intelligence, and of course his New York swagger...I was smitten. He had become my best friend. At the time, I was going through a tough situation with my closest girlfriends. He was there for me, comforting me and re-assuring me when I was at my lowest point. I shared with him more than I had ever shared with another human being. To this day, he could blackmail me; he knows some very intimate details of my life, details that not even those closest to me know. He was protective of me and was my biggest supporter. It was the two of us against the world....we were Crazy in Love.

The summer ended and our availibility and accessibility to each other began to decrease. We were thousands of miles apart in two seperate time zones. He had begun a very grueling doctoral program, and I was entering into my senior year of college. Opportunities to communicate were few and far between, and the option to visit one another was almost non-existant. We were broke college students with crazy school schedules. It was damn near impossible to see each other during the semester. I was adamant about trying to make it work by any means necessary, he on the other hand, felt like it would be too much of an effort, after all...we had no idea when we'd ever live in the same city again. And at that young of an age, long distance dating simply wasn't a sensible option. We tried our hardest to make it work in spite of the odds surrounding us. I tried to be supportive and understanding of his program and the position that he was in, but truth be told, I was a spoiled selfish brat.

I often allowed my mind to wander and others to implant in my head that since he wasn't calling me on a daily basis, that he was probably cheating and didn't really love me like I thought he did. After all, he had never verbally said he loved me. I only knew that he did because of his actions....during the summer. Truth be told, at the time, his actions were no longer reflecting the actions of a man in love. The final straw was when he didn't call me on my 21st birthday. That, to me, was unacceptable. He apologized perfusely about forgetting such an important milestone in my life. I was completely devastated, as that was uncharacteristic of him, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that he was changing. He wasn't the same man that I fell in love with over the summer.

I showed my entire azz and acted a plum fool. He was overwhelmed...overwhelmed with school work, overwhelmed with family issues, and overwhelmed with my demands for more attention and communication. The expendable part of that equation was ME. Our infrequent conversations turned into non-existant ones. Just as our love was unspoken, our break up was too. The fire that was once our summer love, had died down and soon became nothing but ashes and soot. I was devastated. I cried myself to sleep many nights wondering if I had single-handedly caused our relationship's demise.

If only.

If only I had not been so demanding; If only I had been more patient and understanding; If only I had not caused such a big commotion about him forgetting my birthday...maybe, just maybe, we would still have been together.

The reality is that we were very young. Too young to have even been seriously thinking about a way for us to sustain a relationship, especially given the other more important decisions that we had to make for ourselves and our lives. He was mature enough to see that, I on the other hand wasn't. I did not believe in giving up, and probably would not have given up on our relationship if he hadn't walked away first.

I remember one late (or shall I say early) January morning. Fresh off of a date with another guy, I walked into my apartment and broke down on the foyer floor. The guy that I went out with was attractive, intelligent, attentive and available, but he wasn't Ph.D! And afterall, the only person I wanted was Ph.D. Without making note of the time, I picked up the phone and called PhD. It was about 2am his time and he was obviously in a deep sleep. He answered, and all I could muster up was a faint "What happened to us?" and then the tears came. Being the patient man he was (and is), he listened to me as I tried to speak through sobs and tears. He did his best to comfort my aching heart and listen to my ranting and raving. After I calmed down, he sensibly told me that I still meant the world to him, but at that point in his life, he could not juggle the demands of a relationship. His major focus was his education and career, but that didn't mean he loved me any less. I was unsatisfied, intoxicated and uninterested in his feable attempts to soothe my aching heart. I had to get over it...and him.

I often think back to that Summer, the Summer of 2000. The one in which I fell in love with an awesome man. We still communicate and try to see each other at least once a year. The last few times we've gotten together, life's stuggles and strife intervened and caused us to have less than perfect weekends, but a good time nonetheless. I truly believe that he is my soul mate. I have come to the conclusion that sometimes Soul Mates aren't necessarily meant to be in a forever relationship. A soul mate doesn't have to be the one you spend the rest of your life with. I am just lucky to have found him, because some people never do. I am not sure where our lives will take us. We live on seperate ends of the country, neither of us willing or interested in giving up our careers and personal ambitions to conform to the other's lifestyle. We will continue to see each other and have wonderful moments together as long as we are both single. And who knows what the future holds, and what God intends. But one thing I do know is, if no other man in my life ever loved me, PhD did, and I loved him just the same. Every time I see him or hear his voice, I am immediately transformed to the Summer of 2000...the Summer I first fell in Love.