Distraction: A Story

So I passed at least two portions of the PRAXIS exam - the math and the writing. As those were the two I about which I was most concerned, I feel good about the test overall.

I'm working on ways to distract myself from OCD-hamster-wheel thinking. I realized that blogging about how worried I am all the time might not be the best tack to take, so I'm going to try to switch it up a little bit. Since most people like a good love story, or any love story, I have decided to write about how Jim and I met and began dating.

August 2005: I'm relatively stable at an "acceptable" weight, so the M.D. Triumvirate and my mother have decided I'm college-ready. In celebration, I open a Facebook account and cautiously start looking for friends. This was back in the day when little whippersnappers (like my sisters - eek) couldn't get an account, so I had about five friends.

A week before the quarter starts I get a friend request. It's a guy named Jim, from Ohio University, and there are two people in the picture. One is a boy in a wheelchair who clearly has some kind of disability. The other looks around 35 and has a thick beard. So, Lisa, I think. If you refuse, you're potentially dissing a wheelchair-bound boy; if you accept, you're saying "Howdy!" to a middle-aged potential stalker. Damned if you do, damned if you don't - I accepted the friend request. The next day he sends me a very pleasant message, saying he's a sophomore, works in my dorm building and likes my taste in music. He said he hoped to see me on move-in day. At this point I still have no idea which person he is.

That's right, kids. I met my boyfriend of three years on Facebook.

Jim proved to be fully ambulatory on move-in day, and without the beard he looked much younger. He met my mother, even, though I don't think either of them remembers. He remembered my earrings, he said later.

October 2005: Now, this incident I don't really remember. I am walking back to my room through the boy's hallway (I lived at the corner) when I hear a clatter and muffled cursing. I peek through a doorway - there's Jim, cleaning up a broken espresso cup and its contents (yes, he had an espresso machine. Why didn't I date him sooner?). I go in and help him mop up. I have no real memory of this, but I like to think I did it.

November 2005: Jim invites me and another girl to watch The House of Sand and Fog with him in his room. The (long) movie ends. She leaves. We stay on his futon and talk. For an hour. Next week a photocopied article appears under my door. He thought it would interest me.

Later I would find out that Jim's friends had a pool going as to which freshman in the dorm Jim would manage to seduce. I was the dark horse behind Nice-Boobs-But-Attached and Hot-But-Batshit-Crazy. Go figure.

January 2006: By this time I have a group of girls (three of whom are now my roommates) to go to dinner with, and Jim has started to join us. I wasn't eating much, but that changed when one of my weigh-ins was lower than the agreed-upon threshold. Under penalty of going home, I grimly eat everything I can load onto a tray. Jim and the girls say nothing. I realize I love them.

February 2006: I am reading in my favorite hidey-hole on Valentine's Day. Two of my dinner-mates present me with a film canister. Inside is the first clue to a scavenger hunt that sends me around the dorm, picking up the pieces of a heart-shaped puzzle along the way. I catch on pretty quickly and I'm a little terrified: A BOY LIKES ME OMG WTF. That apparently showed on my face when I opened the door to his room. I think I said yes. I think. Jim says it was the most awkward moment of his life.

And thus, we became a couple. It's not Casablanca, but it works for me.