It all comes back to Joe...

Joe and I had kept in touch.  He was my first love and hard to forget.

When he learned that I was moving out of the city, I think he quickly realized what he was about to lose.  He sent me a very cute email invite for dinner and I obliged.  Conversation flowed and laughter consumed the evening.  It was fantastic.  But, at the end of the day, I was still leaving.  I was sadly mistaken to think that distance would help us get over each other and move on.  After all, we knew we couldn't get married and really, in the year or two before that move, he hadn't really been the man I knew he could be...so distance was going to be a good thing for us.  Ha!

I moved to the other side of the country and he made more of an effort than ever to keep in touch with me.  We were pretty much dating again, long distance.  I knew that we had had our ups and downs and I did my best not to forget about all the times that he had made me cry, but there was something about the connection we shared that could not be described.

I had applied to and had been accepted to grad school abroad and so reality was sinking in that not only would we be in different cities, we would be in different countries and that we couldn't possibly carry on a transcontinental relationship.  We (again) needed to make a clean break and move on.

Before I moved, he came for a visit and, together, we went for a 3-day hike in the mountains.  He had never been in the mountains and I had grown up there, so I was incredibly excited to show him my childhood backyard.  It was an incredibly challenging yet gratifying climb.  I loved it, he loved it and we discovered yet another level of love for each other over those three days.  It was...sigh...amazing.

But the reality was that I was leaving a few days later and it was time to (again) go our separate ways...