Committed

I was talking to a coworker the other day when she told me she lived in France for a few years. Intrigued because that has always been a dream of mine, I asked her why she did it. Her response although not unusual, struck me as to how foreign it is to my life:

"It was right after I graduated from college. I had no commitments, no strings attached, and wanted to be a paralegal. So I researched the French visa, and headed straight to France."

As simple as that.

When I think back on my twenty-something years, I can't help but realize how everything was pretty much planned out. In high school, I knew the goal was to get good grades and be an all-rounder to get into college, and so I did. In college, it was pretty much the same thing in addition to spending off-school hours networking with the right people for the right things. Post graduation, getting a job in relation to your major, which you've worked so hard to streamline and clarify seemed the most sensible thing to do. And so, here I am.

With relationships, things weren't so much as planned but they followed a similar path. I went to college accepting the fact that I was to have a long-distance relationship. Even in my freshman and sophomore years, Suen quoted me as being the one "who walked around with a sandwich board saying F*** off, I'm not available!" And she was right. Sure there were times in between, when we strayed. But even so, the commitment was always there. I always said, "I'm sorry, I have a bf" despite the fact that he was miles away and unreachable. 3 years into college, we broke it off questioning, "How much have we grown without the other being around to witness anything?" and that was 1 of the smartest moves we ever made.

Mere months after that breakup, I fell into another relationship and was committed, once again.

A few full years followed: years of blissful and sometimes painful moments of being together, learning about each other, accepting faults, making compromises and developing plans for the future. All these seem part of "the plan." But you know you're doing something wrong when the time spent with someone becomes unbearable. When the both of you can't stand each other's company and yet feel the need to be "together."

What do you do when you're committed?