"Hello, is this Jenni Heffernan Brown? This is the had of graduate admissions for USF. I'm just calling to tell you that we were delighted with your application..."
He said a lot more than that, but I heard nothing. Steve and I were too busy jumping up and down on the guest bed.
Later that evening, we'd walked a half-mile in the rain to celebrate over a cocktail. We'd picked out a new bar that some of our friends keep telling us we need to try. It's relaxed, and slightly swanky, and sophisticated without making you feel dumb for not knowing all of the ingredients on the menu.
As I sat at the table staring out into the rain, I had one thought that repeated in my mind over and over.
"If the twenty-four year old Jenni could have just a glimpse of this moment....would she even believe it?"
Let me paint you a little picture of who I was remembering:
At twenty-four I was dating someone who I almost was engaged to. I want to say this with as many asterisks and disclaimers as I can mention, simply because I know now that I most likely would not have gone through with it.
He was a person I had met while living overseas, and we'd both found the process of re-acclimating to our North American lives more difficult than we'd anticipated. In those first few weeks of being back in our respective countries, I would often find him chatting online late at night. Neither of us could sleep, and chatting with different time zones seemed to ease the anxiety of being awake while the darkness slept.
As you can imagine, chatting turned into more chatting, which turned into phone calls, which turned into visits. It was on one of these visits, while he and I were sitting in a darkened movie theatre, that he leaned over to me and whispered "Do you want to be my girlfriend?"
This was a completely loaded question, considering he was from Vancouver and I was living in Orange County. When you live in different countries, there is no such thing as "causally dating" or "seeing how it goes." There were miles and nationalities between us. We would be planning flights, applying for credit cards, and figuring international calling plans. This wasn't just a proposal for a dinner date.
But I said yes.
And we did all of those things. Vonage. Alaska Airlines Credit Cards. Max out vacation times.
And it went like that for some time.
In actuality, long distance dating is mostly waiting. Waiting to see each other, waiting until you can make plans, and using a lot of international call minutes to catch each other up on the daily stuff in between the waiting.
At some point however, I had to make a leap. I hated the middle ground of seeing each other once a month, and just telling each other about the rest of our lives. I hated waiting for the one visit a month where we could have life together.
We'd been together for several months, when he grabbed me by my hand and pulled me into a jewelry store. It was my birthday. He said, "Let's try on engagement rings."
I tried not to throw up.
But it was the sign I needed. The sign to say that this was going somewhere, and it wasn't crazy to move 1300 miles just to see if it could work in real life. To see if we could do laundry together, make weekend plans, or go grocery shopping together.
At that point I didn't know if it would actually work out, but I'd figured it was worth trying to find out. "What's the worst that can happen?" I would ask myself, "I get there and it's horrible, and I can always come back." So I started applying for jobs in Vancouver, and looking for ways to get my life into Canada.
This was the point where the rips in the fabric began showing. We fought. A lot. He was mean. Often.
One trip, we decided to go to dinner in downtown Vancouver. He actually lived in a small country town about 45 minutes outside of the city. He was in construction. He was in love with a simple life.
I have this image in my mind of walking down a beautiful tree-lined street in downtown Vancouver. Buildings towering overhead. Taxis and cars whipping past.
It was electric.
He could see it on my face.
Later that evening, he began complaining about how 2 hours in the city was enough to destroy him, and this "urban jungle" had too much concrete for him to even think. He hated it and he had no intentions on our life together looking anything like it.
I wouldn't know until later, but this moment in the fall leaves of Vancouver would be a breath, a whisper at what would be my life. I didn't know that I wanted that life. I didn't know a lot of things.
Later that night we fought about the city and country, and my ambitions, and my corporate job. We fought about the smallness of where he lived, and what I wanted out of life. I didn't know it yet, but I I wanted big things. City dreams. Career growth. Travel bugs. I can't pretend to understand what he wanted out of life, but it was beginning to be clear that they were very different.
Several weeks later, he called me and ended things. No long explanations, just simply "I'm done."
It is not often that I let my brain wander back to these past relationships, and the men who occupied those spaces. But as I sat at the table at Maven, clutching a perfectly mixed cocktail, I could not help but let my mind replay the ex-boyfriend, the independence I was trying to find, and willingness to put on someone else's life as a way of finding my own.
"If I had just one glimpse of who I am and what my life is now....would I have even believed it could look like this?"
I watched the rain, and thought how I would have never believed that I had the guts to move to a proper city. I would have never guessed that at some moments I would hail a cab, slide across the smooth seat and casually say "Folsom and Fourth please" like I had been doing it my whole life. I would have never believed that I would have a man that is both incredibly talented and humble. That some evenings over dinner I would ask him, "How was your keynote speech today?" I would have never believed in penthouse apartments, skyline views, or grad school presidents calling my phone on purpose.
Just then, Steve reached across the table and grabbed my hand.
"Are you ok?"
"Yeah...just thinking...I've come a long way since 24."
Wow. I had totally forgotten about that. THIS Jenni has got it going on. You have found yourself...and I'm. So glad you stayed true to yourself! Congratulations..
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