Fast Forward

I drove 5.5 hours to come see The Filmmaker. My previous farthest drive? 2.5 hours. Yeah, I really like this guy. And the drive flew by.

I got here Tuesday evening. I'm leaving Saturday morning. I wish I could stay here longer, but I'm required to be on my home campus Saturday evening.

He's wonderful. He's everything I thought he was, and everything I wanted him to be. I'm already as comfortable around him as I was with Boyfriend #1 (whom I dated for over 2 years). I'm already as open with him as I was with Brian.

We've had conversations that people don't generally have this early on in relationships. Religion. Politics. Child-rearing. Grooming habits. Everything. I wonder if it should be stranger than it is. I've said things to him that I've never said to anyone, and it feels as consequential as discussing the weather. I'm not worried about being too vulnerable. And I'm not afraid that I might scare him off.

He said the "L" word. He loves me. Already. I was speechless. I started crying and laughing and feeling like my soul was going to implode. I wanted to take his essence and crush it into me somehow. I wanted to incorporate his being into mine.

But I didn't say it back.

He says he doesn't want me to say it until I'm ready. He's been saying it on a regular basis for a week. I guess it didn't just slip out. It wasn't a mistake. He means it. (Or, at the very least, he thinks he does.) But I still haven't said it back.

How can I? How can I say that? We've only been dating for four (4!) weeks. And yes, it feels like we hit the ground running with this relationship. We dive-rolled into it. We hit the fast forward button. And I'm as connected to him as I've ever been to anyone. But I still can't (won't?) say it.

It feels like they're aren't many steps left. I like hitting every stepping stone in a relationship. Every rite of passage makes things feel new, exciting, and like you're making some sort of progress. The first date. The first kiss. The facebook relationship status. The labels of boyfriend and girlfriend. (Technically, his announcement of love came between those last two).

I feel like it's my job to step on the brakes a little. He has a history of falling fast (he proposed to his ex after they'd been dating for a month and a half). I am less inclined to that (I wouldn't let Boyfriend #2 call me his girlfriend until we'd been in a relationship for 3 months).

I also try to make sure we take everything slowly physically, and for a very important reason: we're not going to sleep together. He's been married, so obviously he doesn't share my virginal status... but he's religious and doesn't believe in sex outside of marriage.

It's lucky that I've found him. The last guy I dated who wasn't sexually active was Boyfriend #1, whom I broke up with in June 2007. Every guy since then, I've felt like I was disappointing them in some way. But with the Filmmaker, he looks at it as a positive. It's like we're on the same team on some sort of psycho-sexual-cultural battlefield. It's nice to know that I'm not the only one fighting to keep those boundaries in tact.

He's so handsome. Even more so in person. He towers over me when we hug (he's 6'5", I'm 5'6"). I breathe him in like warm peppered freedom. I want to wrap myself up in him like a security blanket. He makes me feel like a little girl and a woman all at once.

We've been really pretty boring over the last couple of days. He introduced me to the British television show Coupling, and I introduced him to a '90s WB comedy called Grosse Pointe. He keeps making me food, like a smoothie, and eggs, and hot dogs. We sit next to each other working on our respective homework assignments and complaining about how illogical they occasionally seem. I'll mention how the word "wasn't" has 4 different pronunciations in my International Phoenetic Alphabet Pronunciation Dictionary. He'll complain that he rewrote the ending of his script using an idea from his Writing Professor, and then the Writing Professor said it was too much of a downer. He brought me to his school while he set up his footage for editing purposes.

Last night I was in a couple of film school homework assignments. In the Filmmaker's project, I played a perfectionist insomniac undergrad student. In his friend's project, I was a reporter who had a scheme to kill an old woman, and the Filmmaker played her dimwitted assistant. It was good fun.

He's in class right now. I'm in his place alone with his beta fish, Buzz & Merlin. I should be working on the insane amount of homework that I have over this break, but I thought I should blog while I have a chance. I haven't been particularly good about it since this guy entered my world.

Later tonight I'm meeting him and his friend at the school to help them with some sound homework of some sort. I think we're filming more tonight, but I don't know what.

We're supposed to watch about 18 movies together before I go, but I'm not sure we'll even get to 1 (every time we try to watch a movie we end up sitting on his couch talking -- yes, talking -- for long periods of time instead). Yesterday he said, "I wonder when we'll get to the point in our relationship when sitting here watching a movie with you will be as great as just sitting here with you."

It's going to be hard to go home.


May you feel comfortable at any speed.

~A~