Waiting for that sinking feeling

It's all that keeps me together

And I'm so scared to let it unwind

Waiting for that same old feeling

- Jeremy Messersmith, "Franklin Avenue"

I had me a man in summertime

He had summer-colored skin

And not another girl in town

My darling's heart could win

But when the leaves fell on the ground and

Bully winds came around

Pushed them face-down in the snow

He got the urge for going

And I had to let him go

- Joni Mitchell, "Urge for Going"

WARNING: this post contains a lot of gossipy, not-well-written details of my life. I've been trying to cut down on that aspect of my blog, but it's October, and a lot of big personal milestones are coming up. I knew this year of my life--senior year of college, graduating, and looking for and starting a new job--would bring a lot of changes but it still surprises me to realize how eventful it's been.

(Note: most of the names here have been changed.)

The Zombie Pub Crawl, one of the biggest Twin Cities events of the year, is next weekend. I'm not really a zombie person, but the crawl has been a highlight for me since I was a sophomore in college. That year, my friend and I just happened to cross paths with the horde of made-up, costumed, drunken twentysomethings. The next year, I didn't dress up but took advantage of the wealth of people-watching fodder. Last year, though, I was 21 and happy to paint my face and meet up with friends for the event. It was just over a month into senior year and I'd been going out to bars and house parties several nights a week. I'd already had my share of wild nights and hangovers to match.

At the pub crawl I met up with Molly, one of my friends from studying abroad in Rome. She shoved me together with her friend Devon, a skinny, black-clad folksinger she assured me I'd love. We danced and held hands, and he did seem nice enough and into me. But any interest I'd had was destroyed when I came back from the bathroom and he loudly asked me how the "pisser" was. (That's a dealbreaker, ladies.) As the night went on I kept running into Roscoe, the bassist in Molly's boyfriend's band. I'd met him before, and our slight familiarity coupled with the mysterious power of zombie makeup kept pulling us together. At first I couldn't tell if he was just being friendly, but then he confessed that he had in fact been flirting with me. At that point I more or less ditched Devon and began pursuing Roscoe. And all this time I was getting drunker and observing ongoing dramas among Molly's friends and dancing crazily with Molly. As the night ended, I was glued to Roscoe's side. A Harry Potter zombie pointed his wand at us and ordered us to kiss, which we uncomfortably evaded; before long, though, we were making out in the parking lot as Molly, her boyfriend, and Devon took off. Roscoe drove me home and spent the night (a first for me). We saw each other twice more and spoke on the phone several times, but though I liked him a lot, we weren't especially compatible. Not long after that, Molly and her boyfriend broke up, and a few months later, she started dating Roscoe--a happy ending.

But before I had really stopped seeing Roscoe, Halloween happened. The summer before, I had spent a lot of time with two girls I knew through my ex-boyfriend Collin (who at the time was barely speaking to me). When one of those girls invited me to her Halloween party, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to visit Rockford for the weekend. I made plans to stay overnight and proceeded to down Jell-O shots and dance the night away in my yellow Power Ranger costume.

Late in the night, Paul showed up. He and I recognized each other instantly from the Rock Valley Mass Comm department, where he'd taken a class and I'd interned the summer before. We had never spoken, but we admitted that we'd caught each other's eyes in that class. The next thing I remember: lying in the middle of the living room floor, Paul on top of me and kissing me furiously, the entire party staring at us and laughing or making snide comments. We adjourned to the bathroom--at one point I was in the bathtub with Paul leaning over me--and then the bedrooms, which were occupied by passed-out partiers. Finally Paul just led me to his car, which was parked outside. Later we returned to a mostly emptied house and continued to make out on the couch as the hostess, her boyfriend, and her sister cleaned up. We slept on the floor and endured a slightly uncomfortable morning after. After a few days of cheerful mocking from the other party guests (one of my good friends compared us to jungle animals who were going to mate at all costs), I found Paul on Facebook and he suggested that we should get together next time I was in town.

But the weekend before Thanksgiving, when I headed to his page to set up a reunion, I saw that he was newly listed as "in a relationship." I was crushed. The next day, I saw that he had removed me as a friend, and was further crushed. (If anything good came of it, it was this: when I confessed the situation to my friend and laughed "I'm pathetic," she responded, "You are not pathetic for liking someone, Colleen. Never think that." I prized those kind words.)

That same pre-Thanksgiving weekend, Collin invited me to meet up with him and his friends (the same crowd from the Halloween party, which he hadn't attended) on the Wednesday night before the holiday. We had renewed our friendship that semester when we kept being drunk online in the same wee hours. His messages had taken a turn for the flirtatious, and I detected a subtext to his Thanksgiving invitation. I had mixed feelings about giving him a second chance after he'd intermittently ignored me in the fifteen months since we'd broken up, but we were getting along, and being dropped by Paul might have made me more vulnerable. In any case, Collin and I hooked up that Wednesday, and again the day after Christmas, and again on New Year's Eve (in his friend's laundry room during their party. I can only imagine the opinion this group of people has of me). If I thought we were getting back together, I was repeatedly proven wrong: he was often distant and reneged on promises to hang out between hook-ups. It bothered me a lot, but I was too stupid and too eager to get out of the house that winter to just let it go.

I wasn't happy with how things ended as Collin and I returned to school, but on the first day of the new semester, I received a message from Paul. He apologized for being an "asshole," explained that he had been in an off-and-on relationship when we met but that it had ended, and offered to take me out next time I was in town. Just after Valentine's Day, that's what happened: a slightly awkward reunion turned into one of the most romantic weekends of my life. We stood on cold sidewalks and smoked cigarettes and kissed, and talked about religion and relationships, and he called me beautiful. The next night we went out with some of his friends and crashed a murder mystery party at his friend's fascinatingly decorated mansion (half the house was designed after the set of Gunsmoke and filled with antiques). For about a month, I was smitten. Despite the distance, I believed in our future together (not least because he hinted that we should both move to California to pursue our creative passions). I even tearfully explained to Collin one night, after he hinted at a spring break rendezvous, that I loved someone else.

Paul and I had another euphoric interlude over that break, but our last night together was a lifetime low point for me. I already felt him being distant as we downed beer and shots at a trashy country bar with his sister and brother-in-law, but it was at his friend's house later that things went downhill. Except I don't know exactly what happened, because I blacked out. The next thing I remember is sobbing violently in my driveway as Paul's car disappeared down the street. I returned to Minneapolis, he texted me that he needed some space, and I didn't hear from him for two months. It hurt a lot. I relayed the whole sad story to my best friends and let them comfort me, but I thought about it almost every day, unable to believe that I'd destroyed my chance for happiness. (Among other things, Paul was the best-looking guy I've ever dated.) I did see him once more over the summer, and this time he seemed to want only to hook up--the romance was dropped. Now his compliments seemed like insults: when he called me "very pretty," I inferred that pretty was all I was to him.

I started dating someone else in July, about two weeks after the last time I saw Paul, and for a long time I didn't think of him. I was creating new memories, having nights that were longer and more interesting, conversations that were deeper. And aches that were fresh--my new paramour's continued refusal to commit has been almost as painful as Paul's abandonment. These past few months, I couldn't even really remember the intensity of my feelings for Paul.

But Halloween is coming up again, and he is on my mind. His gentleness and intelligence still make me wonder about him, where he is and what he's doing. (He appears to have deleted his Facebook.) I don't really speak to the girls I partied with last year, so I doubt I'll be driving home to Rockford for the holiday. Maybe this year I'll celebrate with my boy; maybe by then he won't be mine anymore. I don't know if I've learned anything from the turmoil of the past year (and of course I'm leaving out a few smaller flings, as well as stress that has nothing to do with the opposite sex). I still drink too much, still tend to pursue my own selfish ends, and still let my mind spin out of control with fantasies of long-term romantic happiness. I still end up making out with guys in front of the entire party on far too many nights. No matter where I end up on Halloween, I'd bet good money that I'll end up embarrassing myself, or at least offering up some PDA.

During my brief idyll with Paul, I allowed myself to entertain thoughts of Halloween 2010, of laughingly comparing our whirlwind "first date" to partying as a couple one year later. Of course, it didn't turn out that way--but that no longer hurts as much as it did. The square on the calendar for Halloween 2011 is a blank. I don't know what job I'll have, who (if anyone) I'll be dating, or whether I'll even still be in Minneapolis. But even though I don't want to leave the impetuosity of youth behind just yet, I hope I calm down at least a little over the next twelve months, gain some wisdom and insight and perspective. Or at least spend more nights kissing to the Pixies than crying in driveways.