Two weeks ago it hailed while the sun was shining in Los Angeles. Also, and appropriately I feel, I found myself for the first time in three years starting a real relationship and feeling comfortable in it. Cue earth to spin sideways and backward on its axis!!
Anyway. It’s been a while since then–long enough for me to get to the point of spending an entire week at his house, and therefore long enough to have “the talk” and start telling friends about it. This was also the first time that I, social media junkie that I am, decided I had to change my Facebook status so it would show that little heart icon. I never have before because I am a) noncommital in the extreme, and b) fairly on the DL when it comes to who I actually spend my time with–until things go bad, at which point I immediately turn them into caricatures on this or another similar blog site/newspaper / magazine. The difference here is that things don’t seem to be going bad. (Knock wood plastic glass metal my own head and anything else that might be lucky.)
The whole Facebook thing caused me more internal turmoil than any other part of this transition. I thought about it for a while, and set little internal milestones of when/what would be the appropriate time to bring it up, and then promptly forgot about them, and only decided to bring it up after we’ve had *the talk* (“Are you __’ing anyone else?” he asked. “No, I said. “And I haven’t since–” “No need…that’s all I wanted to know,” said he. “And I don’t intend to,” I finished.)
The next day, enveloped in a rosy glow, I told him I would like to announce this new state of being to the world at large. And he said, okay, and I went to change my profile to the little heart, but I didn’t want to just say “in a relationship” because there’s this weirdo girl on my FB friend list who always is changing from “in a relationship” to “single” to “engaged” every three days w/o e’er naming a name (I think everyone knows one of those weirdo girls). I did not want to do anything that could be construed as weirdo-vague like that…If you’re going to do something, you might as well do it all the way, with intent. So I decided to put his name.
Only you can’t put “in a relationship” and a name unless the namee approves it. So, oh shit. Did I mention my new amour happens to be an extremely private person who does not like having his business aired in public? Yeaahhh, that would be him. (I know, what is he doing with me, right? Tres ironic.)
I was so nervous about asking if this would be okay, it took me two texts and a phone call.
Actually five texts and two phone calls.
Actually I don’t remember but I was tentative in the extreme.
Anyway he said it would be “sweet” so I did it & then literally sat there with my knees shaking waiting for the sky to fall down and 50 people to instantly message me going, “What the hell is this all about, young lady, you are supposed to be single forever!” Or, “Excuse me did we not make out in December? I thought there would be more!” Or “You are supposed to move out of LA; what are you doing getting involved with someone there?” (This is an excellent question, by the way.)
However, none of these comments/questions were posted. No one informed the AP services. A few of my friends did message me privately saying, “Have you gone to the dark side?” but by and large I have not been called to task, and in fact it seems no one really cares, and that is good. Because I’m sketched enough as it is. I am going to have to start practicing saying the word “boyfriend” privately where no one can hear it, b/c right now I just stutter and then mushmouth it into something else. However in time I suppose it will roll off my tongue like any other word. As the past few days have shown, it is hard to consider changing your status–Facebook or otherwise–once you get old and set in your ways (listen to me sounding like some sort of graybeard)…but sometimes not as scary as you think it’s going to be.
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