Thursday

I am only 20 and already I feel like I have to choose between my (future) career and relationship.  Basically, I spent a lot of time looking up competitive advertising internships yesterday.  They are all over the country, and even though they don’t really list internship programs on their websites, I’d assume since they’re in a national publication they’re the real deal.  Now, I don’t know for sure that I will land a competitive internship like that, or even if a large company would be right for me.  But I do know that having a big-name company on my resume would be good in the future, especially if I want to work in advertising/marketing.

However, D doesn’t know where he’s going to be located either, and sometimes I feel like he thinks I can just be wherever he is if he lands a prestigious internship in his field.  Not that he would ask me to give up on getting a competitive internship in my field, but he maybe would encourage me to look more closely at wherever he was.  I feel like I have to choose between being with him for the summer and going after the internships I want and need to get.  Also, I’m a year older than him, so I really need something good this summer, whereas he still has another summer to get experience.  Basically, even though he hasn’t asked me to just follow him around, that is sort of an implicit pressure I feel.  Some of it is coming from me, because I do want to be with him this summer.  But I do know that if it comes right down to it, I will choose the internship.  Our relationship will last, but I will only have this summer for some more experience before I have to enter the daunting real world.

It just sucks that even when our relationship isn’t long distance (aka the last two summers), we know at some point it’s going to become that way because we’ll head back to school.  I want to be at a point in our lives where we can just live together indefinitely.  And that will probably be after we both graduate, but there’s going to be a year in between that happening for both of us, and who’s to say we’ll even still be together?  I like to think that we will be, but things change, and we’re both still really young.  (Especially him … I’m a cradle robber … haha.)  But for almost 3 more years both or one of us will still be in school.  And I don’t plan on sticking by his side after I graduate just waiting for him to graduate, either.  I’m going to make the most of that year, even if I don’t know doing what yet.  Probably just trying to get a job and get settled in a life by myself.

Anyway, I feel the strain between being in a proximal relationship this summer and going after and getting an internship I really want, wherever it happens to be.

Things are so complicated.

Em