Seeing as how I am a glutton for punishment, I have taken on a second job. Actually it is an unpaid internship, but I’m hoping it develops into an eventual “career” after school is all over, so I’m choosing to view it as a strategic move, long-term-wise. It is with this shop/gallery that was started by a graduate of my department, and it has fine art and fabrics and stationary and soaps and clothing and other assorted “shabby chic aesthetic” items.

I love it. I actually sold them some greeting cards a while back, which was when I got the idea that it was exactly the type of gallery that I would love to work in eventually. So I emailed and told them that I am really interested in owning a small business someday, and asked if I could come on as an intern and learn all the backround aspects of running a shop, like the marketing and finances. I’m only going to be there twice a week, because of school and waitressing, but I think it’ll be great. I love my coworkers. And it is such a pleasant atmosphere: we listen to cutesy French pop music all day and organize the jewelry displays and view prospective art to be sold.

I could totally do that long-term.

Things with my Manfriend are good. (It feels almost redundant to type that out; things are always good.) (Did I just jinx it? I take it back.) It’s the most relationshippy relationship I’ve ever experienced, and by that I mean that it’s the only time I’ve had a boyfriend who I felt was like my steadfast partner in some weird game of negotiating our respective lives. Like, we know all/most of the ins and outs of both each others’ day-to-day lives and our relatives and friends from home. We listen to each others’ stories and and gripes and actually care enough to be affected by them by proxy.

I feel like, if something really good happens to me, he’s happy for me, but he’s also happy just within himself, because it’s almost like the good thing happened to both of us. Is that ridiculous?

I had observed this dynamic in some friends’ relationships in recent years; never in college or just after, but only now that we’re in our late twenties and are (supposedly) becoming more astute in our boyfriend choices. I envied it. I envied the fact that I had the ability to recognize this facet of their interactions, but for whatever reason wasn’t lucky (if that’s the word) enough to be experiencing it as well.

Now I realize that I have it, and that we’re sort of creating it more and more every day. I feel overwhelmed by all the momentum; things are too good, and they’re too solid, and he likes me too much, and it’s all going to fall apart spectacularly and then I will really be shattered. Any day now, he’s going to realize that I am all take take take, and that I have weird conflicting feelings about sex, and sometimes I say mean things about my closest friends.

And that I’m really sad deep down and a big drag, and he won’t want to be around that, because why would anybody? I don’t even want to be around it, and it’s me.

I sort of can’t believe he’s stuck around this long.