I do not like to talk about my romantic life because I am neither a love columnist nor a romantic. Sure, I'll allude to it so that I appear both attractive to the opposite sex and "more than just a writer chick." But writing an entire column about it? My sister would kill me with words that all rhyme with lame. My romantic interest - alas, I have whittled the many suitors down to just one - would blush and probably mumble something. My friends would ask for their very own column if I deigned to waste my time on a "boy I'm getting with." And I, knowing my track record with dudes in college, would regret the whole thing a week later.
But I can handle my sister laughing and my "boyfriend" blushing and my friends complaining. I can handle the regret of having written something that meant something else a week later. What I cannot handle is trite and cliched and quoted all the time when we're young and afraid of the choices we make. I cannot handle regretting something that I did not do. Clearly, this kind of regret can be felt in every relationship formed and in every action contemplated. But romantic relationships, especially in college, this college in particular, seem so tenuous and fragile that they appear to be the perfect tragedies of what could have been.
I am knee-deep in a relationship that I would coin as "what's happening right now." I have not done anything destructive enough to send it over the edge of what-could-have-been. This is where the potential for regret is fostered. This is where my short temper and my stubbornness and my jealousy could cause me to sit still and wallow in the realm of not doing anything. This is where that silly quote comes from: something about regretting something 20 years from now that I did not do, rather than what I did do.
You may wonder how a short-fused temper and jealousy can lead to inactivity. First, they lead to outbursts of anger and unnecessarily petty comments. I usually keep these in my head. In all of my relationships, I find myself wanting to be more right than whomever I am with. In most situations, I refrain from showing my anger, suck up whatever feeling of "being wronged" that I have created in my mind and happily join my comrade - be it my mother, my sister or one of my three friends - in our current venture.
In this new relationship with a male, though, I find myself incapable of happily joining in current ventures after I feel that I have been wronged. I blame it on my inherent lack of trust in any male under the age of 35. I blame it on my inherent lack of trust in myself to let good things be. If "he" does something that I deem irrational, I will defend my rational self until I am out of breath. I will wallow in the inactivity of not going to the party or walking to the library because I am too busy worrying about all the ways I am right and my offender is wrong.
But being right does not mean being happy. When I'm right, I am often alone.
This weekend I had the opportunity to remain idle. I found myself arguing on the phone with the only boy in college who has taken me on a dinner date - albeit it was one time, but it still definitely happened - telling him that it was entirely irrational for me to walk to a party at 11 at night. I hung up and settled into my bed. I rolled around for a few minutes in my queen-sized bed, feeling less like a queen and more like a petty, lonely child. I sighed and let myself realize that, while walking to a party late at night was not rational, sitting at home alone during a Saturday was not right.
I dressed quickly and walked to the apartment where I could hear the music and the people from three flights down. My sister flung her arms around me when I walked in: "I didn't know you were coming!" She didn't let go of me for five minutes, completely absorbed in the surprise. The guy from the other side of the phone looked up when I came in and grinned, erasing the "are you mad at me" text and embracing me as excitedly as my sister had.
So maybe they were already happy because they'd been at a party for two hours, but the happiness that exuded from two of my favorite people disproved any argument I would ever make for rationality. The most stable relationship in my life, and the most fragile, stared me in the face Saturday night. I could have gone to sleep and woken up to chastise the two of them for going out three or four nights in a row. Instead I stayed up until five in the morning listening to one snore and the other belt Bob Dylan songs.
I don't know what I'll remember in 20 years, but I know next week that I'll stop myself from arguing with the people I care about, just so I can be right. I'll regret all the late nights and the lack of early mornings, but I won't wish that there was something I had done. I'll be entirely wrong - and nothing will feel so good.
Connelly's column runs weekly Thursdays. She can be reached at c.hardaway@cavalierdaily.com.
Read More
A song lyric became my best piece of advice
By Emily Barrie | 4 hours agoToo often, people — including myself — get so attached to the idea of "forever" that we miss the value of short-term experiences.
At Emmy Squared, Detroit-style pizza is upstaged by star handhelds and sides
By Xander Tilock | 4 days agoEmmy Squared is a Brooklyn-based restaurant that serves Detroit-style pizza and recently expanded into Charlottesville.
Sustainability in the lecture hall and beyond
By Ingrid Gay | 6 days agoStudents in all three of these programs stress that now, more than ever, it is important to be learning about our environment.
