I always imagined meeting the love of my life in college. I knew how it would happen: we would be in the same class, we'd get to talking after he asked to borrow a pencil and our budding friendship would give rise to a sweet-smelling romance which would serve as fodder for stories our grandchildren would hear while gathered round the fire. About a month after I settled into my dorm it dawned on me that this straight-to-DVD flick I'd created in my mind would never play out like I wanted it to. Guys never asked to borrow pencils and if they did, they most likely walked out of the lecture hall without remembering to return them to me. There were girls willing to do everything and anything, all of them skinny, blonde and with a reckless appetite for alcohol. Never one to party in high school, I found the thrill of meeting people under the watchful eye of beer's socially lubricating effects enthralling. After all, waking up at three in the afternoon with smudged eyeliner and an intense craving for cheeseburgers is what college is all about, right? I decided I needed to edit my story. Maybe this perfect man would be at a party sitting on a couch and I would walk into the room and captivate him and he would ask my name and we'd look at the stars and realize we were meant for one another.

Well, parties got old. I got sick of having to introduce myself to people who all began to look and sound the same after awhile. I'd never remember their names and nor would they be able to recall mine but we'd probably have a class or two sometime in the future. I felt like coleslaw. People don't really like coleslaw but they eat it anyway. I was the coleslaw in terms of men. There were no guys who particularly fancied me; I just would happen to be a warm, breathing female and thus I fit the bill. After about a year or so of this I concluded I was destined to become an old maid with twenty cats and that if I was no longer looking for a boyfriend I could focus on other conquests like studying abroad. I began to research programs and possible countries. I found one I liked very much and planned to leave in January of 2008. I'd go, come back a cultured and humble young woman and be prepared to tackle job interviews and deadlines. There was nothing holding me back. I was a free woman with no obligations. A million cliches ran through my mind: there's no time like the present, it's now or never, you only live once.

Then I got a boyfriend.

To him I was buttery lobster, not runny coleslaw. My feelings for him did not come crashing into me like the freight train I thought so surely a boyfriend would bring. No pencils, no class together, no couches or starry nights. We were just two people who fit together and it seemed like the most ordinary, yet the most fulfilling, relationship of my life. I must change to the present tense now.

He is my boyfriend and I do not plan on letting him go anytime soon. I thought it would be so easy and clean to leave this country and study abroad but that was when I was silly and selfish and had no idea that I'd ever be anything more than the coleslaw in a little plastic dish to anyone. Two days ago I was watching his band play and I realized at that moment that I would really, really miss watching him pluck away at his bass in a sleazy little bar that had poor lighting and a few pool tables. Somewhere after my grandfather died and before I went to college I decided that life was best lived when you never let yourself become attached to anyone because it's just that much easier to say your goodbyes and walk away, and shortly after I composed that theory I threw it out the window. I will put my heart out on this virtual sleeve and confess to everyone that I am not looking forward to leaving him but I am so excited at the same time. Every inch of me wants to live in another country for five months. Every inch of my selfish, motivated, not-going-to-work-at-the-grocery-store-anymore self. If I've learned anything from my mother it's that you don't give yourself up for a man and I don't think I ever would; I just don't want to make a mistake. My biggest fear, however, is that I'll find someone else, which doesn't make sense because I can't imagine myself with another. I'm not the cheating kind but sometimes opportunities arise, like when you are twenty and in a foreign country and thousands of miles away from anyone you've ever known. Perhaps I am getting ahead of myself. I haven't even gotten accepted into the study abroad program yet.