Moving on...Together

Sometimes when people are talking to me, and it strikes me as idle chatter, I start to agree with them in a way that leads them to think that I'm totally into their ideas. This often gets me into trouble, because when someone thinks that I'm backing their idea, they try to get me in on whatever scheme they've got going. I probably shouldn't be allowed to say words.

At some point during my graduating year, I ended up spending more time with my friend Leah than with anyone else. This wasn't necessarily a problem for either of us, except that she seemed to take everything much more seriously than I did, and I had kind of a short fuse when it came to what irritated me.

We had been talking about what we were going to be doing after high school, and, even though I ended up landing on going to community college immediately after graduation, I had, at this point, decided that I was going to take a year off from school and just work. Leah, too, had had far too much pressure from her parents in the recent months, and had decided that my plan of doing absolutely nothing was probably best for her, and, since we would both be slumming it, she mentioned that we should move in together.

While we were talking about it, I really did think that it was just one of those fantasies that would never amount to anything. We talked about whether we wanted to stay in our hometown (answer: no) or whether to move to the big city up-island or the big city down-island. We briefly entertained the idea of moving to the really big city on the mainland, but agreed that we would both end up murdered.

So we talked about moving to one of the bigger cities and getting an apartment together, with me getting a job somewhere (I can't remember what we had decided on, but I don't think it was retail) and her transferring to the big city branch of one of the fast food chains she was working at.

I'm sure we wasted the better part of one of our study breaks discussing all of the things that we would do, everything we would accomplish, and how it was going to be the most amazing experience of our lives. And then, when we parted ways at the end of the day, I promptly put all that talk out of my mind and focused myself on things that I actually wanted to happen.

It wasn't until later in the week that one of our other friends came up to me and started asking when Leah and I were moving. After a moment of shock, I realized that Leah was going to all of our friends and blabbing about all of the plans we had made that I hadn't been taking seriously in any way. That made things really awkward for me, as she tended to bring it up frequently so that we could get our act together, and my standard response was something along the lines of "...yeah, that'll be...SO cool!"

For the next few weeks, Leah would continue on about where in the city she wanted to get an apartment, the kind of furniture she wanted to have, and she even went as far as to make house rules, such as how frequently it was acceptable to have people spending the night. The answer was: never for me, often for her.

As we came closer to the end of the year, it was eventually decided, somewhat against my will, that I would be attending the university in my current town. That plan would soon fall apart, which would leave me feeling dejected and bitter, and I would end up staying at home for at least another year while I attended the community college in my hometown. The rapid shifts in my direction were, apparently, too much for Leah, and she told me that our arrangement just wouldn't work out until I could get my act together.

This would appear to be simply a convenient reason for her to get out of our arrangement, as she had made plans with another friend of hers that the two of them would move in the opposite direction and live together. Ironically, their plans to move from our hometown would fall apart as quickly as mine did, though the two of them still would end up living with one another.

Part of the reason that I didn't want to move in with my friend is that we really knew how to push each other's buttons, and we often got on each other's nerves. I imagine that, if we were living in an enclosed space with one another, it would only serve to exacerbate the situation, and our friendship would destruct extremely quickly.

So Leah and I never lived with one another. We also, unfortunately, didn't stay in touch for too long after high school.