"The magic of first love is our ignorance it can ever end."

Having been a bit bummed out last night, I went through all my pix from Oz today in attempt to both cheer me up and inspire me to be crafty and get back to scrapbooking all my stuff from the trip over there.

Looking back it kinda feels like I fit a whole 4 years worth of fun in to 6 months. Which is a good thing, since the 4 years of fun college should have been really amounted to about .75 years worth of fun, 6 months of which was spent in Australia.

Of course it's a bit bittersweet to re-live everything again. I hardly hear from anyone I was over there with anymore, mainly due to the fact that when I got back I was so depressed I was barely functional for months so keeping up correspondence was not a top priority. Nowadays I couldn't even locate contact info for 99% of anyone so all I have to remember with is these pictures and some other assorted memorabilia.

Which is maybe the way it should be. There are a couple people I could imagine staying close with for years despite distance--Mark Keevers and Cat McCrimmon [last names for Google's sake] mainly (who were, respectively, my closest Aussie and American friends there).
And I did keep in touch with them at first when I got back. There was even talk of meeting up with Cat while I was in Cali or when she was on the East coast, but nothing ever came of it.

I took leaving Australia particularly hard because of what I had there and because of what I had to come back to. Most difficult was leaving my boyfriend over there, Luke Searles, who I grew extremely close with in practically no time at all.

Like Adam (who I had never even seen at this point so this shouldn't be any kind of slight), Luke was someone I saw and paid attention to before I knew. He worked at the Uni bookstore and in sitcom-like fashion I made extra unnecessary trips there just to run in to him, and repeatedly professed my love for the "bookshop guy" to Cat and Mark et al. during myriad drunken evenings, of which just about every evening seemed to be.

We finally actually met the first time I ever spotted him out at a bar (and was conveniently drunk enough to talk to him) and went out a few days later, after which we were largely inseparable for the remainder of my time in Oz. The last month or so of my trip I actually wound up moving in as my University housing had run out, as had my money, so previous plans to spend the last month traveling were scrapped.

I one hundred percent believed in how in love I felt, which was quite a contrast to the guarded, skeptical self I remember leaving behind in the US. I was always aware that my time in Oz was time in a fantasyland, but I somehow justified the craziness of our relationship...he was older, we'd both had long-term relationships before, everyone thought we were great together, and he believed in it just as much as me. I couldn't help but think this was something different so I allowed myself to let daydreams come true as we concocted plans for him to visit me--first a year down the line, later 6 months from my departure--and actually took action to make them happen--his setting up a new savings account and getting another job, as well as actually discussing the benefits of marrying before I left in order to ease future visa and immigration worries.

We continued on the path we'd lain before I left for a month or two after I got back to the States. I was still confident we could make this harebrained idea work, even if it felt as though I was falling deeper and deeper into a hole with each passing day. I'd left a sunny, carefree, wonder world, and even though Luke lived in Oz rather than being a visitor like myself, that still seemed a large part of the life he, and almost everyone else, led. I knew I was weighing him down each time we talked, until he finally just stopped calling.

I'll never know what happened--I haven't heard from him in years, and like most everyone else I met over there, I wouldn't know how to reach him if I wanted to.

And I sort of want to. And I think that's what bugs me to this day and makes me still have the occasional dream about him like I did last night. I kept a a journal for the entirety of my stay but I can hardly remember everything about him. I know there were things I didn't like and I have to wonder whether I've built him up inside my head to be greater than he ever was. I must have right?, if the way things ended taught me anything at all. But I want to know if my memories are accurate. I wonder whether he's gotten married. Did he ever finish his degree? What happened to all the friends I met through him? What's he doing for work these days? But I guess most of all I wonder if he still thinks about me.