And boy have there been some shipwrecks.

Never mind - Columbia is even (so even!) but he's certainly not boring.

He surprised me last weekend with a burst of affection I hadn't seen before. He stayed with me for three days. He talked about future times of staying together. He talked about coming to my races. He started running (!). He acted suspiciously like...I don't know...like a boyfriend?

I was not freaked out by this either, which is pretty significant since I'm basically terrified as hell of getting hurt again and resigned that he'll disappear the moment I allow myself to become attached. Instead of pulling away (although I wanted to) I cautiously let myself get taken up into the current and tried to let him show me the kind of relationship he sees for him and me.

He insists that we're like Eternal Sunshine: he's all boring and literal and I'm all exciting and abstract. The analogy sounded a little trite to me...I can only imagine swarms of hipster boys say that to their flighty, artistic girlfriends. But we do have a certain dissonance between us, kind of like the movie. Something about us as a couple doesn't make sense, something I can't quite put my finger on. And, like in the movie, being coupled with him feels good in spite of the dissonance. It feels warm in my tummy and lumpy in my throat.

Maybe I could get used to this.

Or maybe I'll get terribly hurt and want to pay someone to help me forget him.

I feel like this relationship is an out of body experience. But I don't think, after the sickening amounts of heartache I've been through in the last three years, that I could do it any other way without eliciting a fight or flight response.