i. She never agreed to live with me. Or to allow me to live with her, I suppose would be a more accurate assessment, since it was her apartment I moved into. That was the way our relationship had always been. Things happened, and we accepted them rather in spite of ourselves.

Not that this was something I minded, of course. It was she that had spoken against living together. She was never clear on why, but then she never was clear on the why of anything. I had followed her to New York, and ended up on her couch. When her roommate moved out, I inherited her room, and never moved out.

We managed well enough, though. I started working and paying for bills, and she kept up her schooling, and everything ran alright.

I remember explaining to Sargent Perkins what I was doing. I knew more than I knew I knew about what was up. He had been my instructor for ROTC my last semester of college, and I couldn't have my grades released without speaking to him. By that point I didn't think it mattered, since I wasn't going to finish my degree, but I had told him I would be there.

He advised me against it, of course. He told me all the things I would hear from my parents when I told them: I had only one more year; I shouldn't throw away me education; it would be a lot harder to go back. I just told it to him up front:

"I know all that. I know what I am doing is stupid. I know I need a degree, and I know I won't know just how much I am throwing away until I look back on it in ten or twenty years and see this as the turning point where I threw my life away. I know all that up here" -- I tapped my head -- "but I need to know it here" -- I tapped my breast. "I don't want a degree, I feel I am just spinning my wheels here. I feel I need a change."

He wanted to stop me, to force me to change my mind, but he knew he could not do that. I appreciated him and all he had done to help me, but he had no authority over me after the end of the semester. He could not force me to want a degree. I had at least to take a break, to find out what I really wanted.

A break extended to a year, and then a couple of years. I wanted a lot of things. I wanted a home. I wanted a girl with her hair tied back in a pony tail working on her knees beside me as we fixed up a place, our place. I wanted to belong.

More than anything else, though, I wanted her. So I followed her to New York, threw away my past, and desperately grasped at a future I was well aware I may never realize.