Moving
I haven't told you yet, but I'm moving much closer to you. I'll be just thirty minutes away, a world of difference from the over four-hour distance that separates us now. I'm going to tell your mom this weekend. I'm incredibly nervous about her reaction, how this might affect the uneasy peace we've had recently as it regards our visitation arrangement.
I'm not asking for permission this time, or asking what she thinks. I made that mistake once and allowed myself to be talked out of it. This time, I'm merely announcing that I am, in fact, moving, and that we should work together to figure out what this means for our visitation arrangement. If past experience is anything to go by, she won't like the idea of me being closer, at least at first, and maybe not ever. But the time for splitting my life is over. The time to go all in is now.
I'm aware that there's a chance that my moving will have absolutely no effect on the amount of time I'm able to spend with you. Or worse, that somehow I'll end up with less time with you than before. This is a risk I'm willing to take, and I'll cross that bridge if and when I come to it.
For a long time (too long, perhaps) I held out hope that things between your mom and I would thaw, not in a romantic sense, but as it regards my spending time with you. As foolish as it sounds now, I was waiting for it, wanting there to be a clear sign that more time with you was now within reach, and I had nothing to lose from moving closer.
This "thaw" never came and I realized this summer I cannot wait any longer. I must go all in. It's now or never. I've allowed her to think that I'm okay with the nine hours I get to see you every other weekend—that I don't mind commuting often the same amount of hours round-trip for each visit as the length of our time together. How she, or anyone for that matter, can think that I'll be perpetually okay with seeing you so little is beyond me.
This week I'm taking vacation and heading down earlier in the week, although the first of our scheduled visits isn't until Friday. I've going to use the extra time to look at several apartments, one of which I hope will be the one I want, and whose owner and/or realtor service wants me. I would like to move by the middle of December. My job in a city close to you starts on the first of January. If I can get the apartment squared away in the next two or three weeks, that would be such a weight off my shoulders. Then I only need to find and buy a car, plan the logistics of the move, and I'm all set.
Before I head down on Wednesday, I've got to give notice to my landlord (who's also my roommate) in Hamburg that I'm moving out. I'm also apprehensive about how he'll react, as he has quite a volatile disposition, but I keep trying to remind myself that how he reacts is not my responsibility. And who knows? Maybe he'll surprise me and be cool-headed about it. I can't wait until I never have to see him again, for a myriad of reasons, but that's a story for another time.
Having finally made the decision to move, and making the requisite preparations, is stressful but also incredibly exciting. I will miss my friends here, I will miss the familiarity I have with this city that I've come to know so well, but I'm ready to go. Hamburg was good to me but the time has come for us to part ways. The time to go all in on my relationship with you is now. And if for some reason, it still doesn't work out? Well then I'll deal with that when the time comes. For now, I'm letting myself hope that this will bring meaningful change and a deepening of our relationship.
And if, by some curious twist of fate, you should find yourself reading these words sometime in the future, I want you to know that no matter what our relationship looks like now, whether we're close and talk about anything and everything or if we never see each other and I am but a blurry specter in forgotten childhood memories: this is my decision. You aren't forcing me to do this and have no control on the outcome. Whatever happens, wherever we end up or don't end up, please live your life and find joy, find happiness, wherever you can. If some of that happiness is with me, how happy I would be, but you don't owe me that.
You don't owe me anything.
I love you, and I always will.