Annie, The Doppelganger

Have you ever seen How I Met Your Mother? It’s one of my favorite shows and recently I’ve gotten Madic into watching. Every once in awhile I sit on our floor with him and catch a few episodes on the computer. The latest one we watched was Doppelgangers. In the last scene Ted tells Robin that eventually we all become our own doppelganger; we are completely different people who just happen to look like us. Ted makes a comparison of their characters five years earlier. Maybe it was the sangria thinking, or maybe it was the nostalgia from an earlier conversation with my mother, but I started to think about how I was my own doppelganger.

Five years ago I had just graduated from high school. I was dating a boy I was convinced was the love of my life and just months from an engagement. I had decided to defer my college acceptance for a year to work a little and travel to the Dominican Republic to volunteer. I had my life completely planned out in front of me. Although I cannot remember my exact plans, I know they never involved me moving to Austin with Madic, signing a one year lease on an apartment we couldn’t afford to furnish. But here I am; sitting on the floor of an empty living room drinking gifted sangria and watching How I Met Your Mother with my best friend.

A number of things have changed since July 2006. The Boy and I went through a tumultuous breakup the likes I could have never imagined. I never finished college. I lived in London and Denmark. I fell in love with a frat boy from Maryland and then chose my own life path instead of following him. I moved back in with my parents. I picked up and moved to Texas without any plan, without any job… just following a dream.

Ted tells Robin that five years ago she was great, but her “doppelganger”, the Robin of now, was the greatest friend and most amazing person he’d ever met. How do I feel about my doppelganger? I am overflowing with pride. Sure, my life hasn’t turned out anything like I planned when I was eighteen. Of course I wanted to get a degree. Of course I had dreamed of marrying The Boy and starting a family. But I am so proud of where I am now. I’ve taken chances, I’ve gone on adventure after adventure, I have lived. And I’m nowhere close to being finished.

Maybe I’m a little nervous and occasionally frustrated about my job hunt and not really knowing anyone other than Madic. Maybe every once in awhile I question my decision and miss home, my family, my friends. But I love this city. I’m excited about my job prospects. I have been blessed in finding an amazing community of young, Catholic professionals. I am meeting new friends every day. I have also grown a considerable amount in the last five years. I am stronger, more independent, more mature, more grounded. I have had my heart broken, I’ve made compromises and mistakes, I’ve had regrets. But I have learned from it all.

This doppelganger, this version of Annie five years later, she is the girl – the woman – I’ve always wanted to be. I just had to grow up to figure it out. And you know what? I’m excited to find out who Annie will be five years from now, but I will not be at all surprised if she is nothing like me.

I just want to travel

A couple days ago I announced to my mother I had made another career change, and then five minutes later I took it back.
"I don't know what I want to do! I just want to travel, that's it, just travel." I whined. Living back at home I've become such an amazing whiner.
"Then why are you plopping yourself down in Texas for a year?" Mom responded defiantly - Mom has also become very snappy. Oh we make a happy household.
"Because I've always wanted to live in Texas! So I'm trying it out. And then in a year I'll go to Nepal for three months, then I'll come  back and make more money then go --"
"ANNIE!" My mom interrupted me with an abrupt yell, "I want grandchildren!"
"Well in order for you to get grandchildren from me I need to find a man, and I don't see that happening any time soon."
"Not at the rate you're going! Why can't you just sit still for a minute and allow a man to actually meet you!"
"If he can't keep up he's not worth it! Oh and Mom, I am your fifth child, why don't you go bother the married children. Or even the ones who are in relationships." Also, side note here, she does have two granddaughters already, but they live in Denmark, and that makes her sad. She wants grandchildren stateside. "Also!" I begin to storm, "I am only twenty-three years old!" Here's the problem with that argument: all of the females in my family have either married, had a child, or had a very serious boyfriend that would quickly lead to marriage by the time they were my age. Usually by the age of twenty-one. My family is used to that. They expect that. I even expected it.
At nineteen I thought I had my life mapped out for me. I had a date picked out for my wedding to "the love of my life." We had a plan to live in Spain for a few years and come back home to start having babies.  Even after things crashed and burned with The Boy I still thought of myself as a girl who would settle down young, with a handsome man, have babies right away - and lots of them, live in the country with the white picket fence and a family dog.
I can't pinpoint when things began to change. But after living in Europe, after halfheartedly going on dates, meeting a wonderful man but losing him again due to distance, I realized that I didn't just want to be a wife and mother. I want to live my own life, have my own plans, be my own complete person.
Yes, of course I would still like to meet a man someday, I still absolutely want to have children, but I am in no rush. I am twenty-three, I have years ahead of me. Right now, I need to figure out what kind of life I want to live, who I want to be, where I want to be. And maybe, someday, someone will come along who wants the same things out of life, and we will continue to travel side by side.

The Boy, a finale

When I found out The Boy was applying to grad school in Austin, well, let's just say I didn't take it well. As I explained before, I have been trying to get away from him for almost four years now. Wow. Four years. 
A week after I found out, I was in Copenhagen and finally able to cry into my best friend Neen's arms about how unfair life can be. We drank wine, we talked about how I could ever have loved a boy like him. She reminded me how far I have come, how much I learned from that relationship, how I won't make the same mistakes I made before.
And then we stopped talking about it. We drank more wine, some vodka, some rum, some gin, and we had fun. 


Today she emailed me,

"The Boy's facebook says he didnt get in to utexas. i did a little dance for you when i saw that, then i felt petty for a second, then that went away and i did another little dance."




That's my best friend. And, my God, did that lift a huge weight off of my chest.

Today "The Boy" is featured at Check the Box Entertainment!
Do you follow Check the Box? I have been for awhile now, and their posts are so relate-able! Head on over to their blog to see my post, and explore the rest of the site!

The boy

I have a confession to make. I am running away. I have been running away. Every decision I have made in the past few years, every time I have picked up and moved thousands of miles away, it has been to escape.
When I am back home, I hide. I rarely go into town. I hate going into the grocery store.
I'm hiding. I'm running away. From my past. From a boy. THE boy. The boy I fell in love with when I was eight years old. The boy I spent years staring at while I was at church, during soccer practice. The boy who finally asked me out in high school. The boy who gave me butterflies with every smile. The boy who would sing to me when I was feeling sad. The boy who was there for me, the boy I told my problems to, the boy who would lean on me when things weren't everything we wanted them to be.
He was the boy I planned my life around. He was the boy who asked me to marry him, the boy I said yes to.
But he was also the boy that played with my emotions. The boy who lied. The boy who cheated. The boy who strung me along after he realized he hated me. The boy I finally broke up with. The boy who continued to call me over and over. The boy who showed up at my dorm in the middle of the night, begging me to see him. The boy who got a new girlfriend two days after we broke up. The boy who didn't tell me about the new girlfriend for months. The boy who would tell me he loved me over and over, and then tell me he hated me.
The boy who seemed to show up everywhere I went. The boy who would tell me I was ugly, I was crazy, I was unloveable. The boy who would tell me he couldn't live without me, while he paraded his new girlfriend around our town. The boy who would freak out and show up in the middle of the night when he found out I went on a date.
The boy who ruined me. The boy who made me hate myself because I let him treat me the way he did. The boy I spent years trying to get over, to get away from.
I finally did, I finally escaped, I finally ran away. I moved to Copenhagen. He sent me a terrible letter just weeks after I moved there. It was as if I couldn't get away. He still tried to contact me constantly. I blocked him from everything.
I returned home for a visit. I saw him again. I fell into his spell again. I thought it would be ok if we became friends. I thought it would be ok. It escalated. And then it fell apart again. He peppered me with abusive language. He blamed me for every bad thing in his life. He told me he never loved me. I hated myself.
Every time I would see him, every time I would see his parents - his parents who I had loved like my own family, who had started to become my own family - I would fall apart. My ears would burn. I would start to shake. I couldn't handle being in the same place as him.
I spent six months in London and things started to change. I met Penn. I realized just how terrible our entire relationship had been.
But as much as I had changed, had healed, there was still something there. Still a terrible fear that I would fall back into the destructive life I had been living for so long. Just to feel loved. Just for those fleeting moments of adoration.
Moving home was difficult. I didn't want to see his parents. But I do see them, almost every week. They try to catch my eye. They try to say hello.
They said hello today. We ran into them at the bagel shop. They had overheard my aunt talking about my move to Texas. His dad told me he had been there. He had gone to Texas to look at grad schools with HIM. He joked about the Red Sox as if what he said had not made my stomach drop out of me.
He left. And I panicked. I am moving thousands of miles away. And for what? To possibly be in the same city as him again? But just because they were looking there doesn't mean he will go there, right? This cannot possibly happen again. I have spent the last couple of years running, and he keeps catching up to me.
Why can't he just be the boy I barely remember, not the boy I can't escape?