I'm Going Back To Chicago. For Real This Time

Easy asked me to be his girlfriend. That seems odd, right? Anyone who knows Easy and me from listening to me talk would respond with, "he wasn't your boyfriend...?"

And they wouldn't be crazy for asking such a question. Why would I spend the majority of February here in St. Louis? Why would I be looking for jobs in St. Louis? Why would I be doing a number of things that don't make sense to do when you're not in a committed relationship?

All those are good questions, but what can I say? I'm in love. People do stupid stuff when they're in love. Also, Easy is weird about being boyfriend-girlfriend. I just call it weird because I've never come across anyone who acts like that before.

To him, it's one of the big steps in a relationship. It's the pre-cursor to being engaged. I always took it to be the natural next step after you realized you like a person and want to spend time together exclusively. But whatever, we did it his way.

And now I have a boyfriend. This will be interesting. Since Easy cares so much about this designation, I wonder if it will matter to him about our anniversary. I'm not sure when it was. It may or may not have been after midnight when he asked me to be his girlfriend. I never checked.

So our anniversary will either be February 19th or February 20th. I will likely not remember anyway, I'm just grateful it doesn't coincide with Valentine's Day. He said he planned on waiting until the anniversary of the day we met to ask me. I'm glad he didn't wait that long. Seriously? A whole year to become girlfriend and boyfriend with all the man hours we've been logging?

At least that's a date I can remember though. It's my friend's wedding anniversary. It would have been rude to co-opt their anniversary. Maybe Easy will propose before next February and then I won't have to remember our anniversary. I know I know, worst reason ever to get engaged because that's just another anniversary to try and fail to remember.

But how do I celebrate us being officially couple? By heading back to Chicago. I've been here forever! It's time to act like I have a life outside of the space Easy has made for me in his life.

Plus, election day is Tuesday. There's no way I'm missing that. I'll be on an early morning train back to the city Tuesday. Sonny will be picking me up from the train station so we can catch up over coffee (after he takes me to go vote).

I'm kind of glad there's a mayoral election. I take the political process very seriously, and it would take something that serious to pull me away from here. But it's for the best. I don't live here. That would totally freak my parents out.

There's only a few things left that I could do that would just completely piss my mother off. Live with a man I wasn't engaged or married to, elope, have a child out of wedlock, dye my hair some unnatural color like sky blue, or get a tattoo on my face. Those are pretty much it.

So like I said, I need to go back to Chicago. One thing that will be difficult is maintaining my schedule for studying for the GRE. That's been amazing here in St. Louis. I have guaranteed uninterrupted time to study. That will change once I'm back in the city, but I will do my best because I do intend on taking the test next month.