Reasons, Seasons, Lifetimes

If I loved you less I might be able to talk about it more

I might mention the fact that your daily Good Morning! Teams messages fill me with light. I think you're a girls' boy the way others are Christians -- in ways that only make you better, with religiosity. And I'm so glad I met you, so glad I get to lean over the side of your desk and gossip about liquidity seeking algorithms and the job market until the grown ups go home, so glad we eat lunch together on the terrace every day because you will always wait for me before going up.

That I regret not knowing you sooner is an understatement. Perhaps currently the biggest regret about my choice of college. I'd tell you that your universal acceptance is the singular thing in this world I hope to emulate. Your kindness, your work ethic. You never judge even when I seem so young, even when I have so little grace. You shhh me with a laugh behind your eyes, and strut like a man on a mission. You trust me to tell you when your shirt is see through, but even when I talk too loudly about bra lines, you split honey roasted almonds with me after the close. You are my favorite part of this season. 

I might be able to discuss all the ways I've survived through you. How much I love the way you talk about the people in your life, how my favorite part of each day is coming to find you in your eponymous sweater. How I think you're brilliant and beautiful and underappreciated, how much I want to cling to you in every room. How I text you before I leave the way I used to text my father, because somehow, even if you don't know it, you're responsible for getting me home safely. 

I want to talk about how you sending me calendar invites and calling us sharing a desk a "shadowing session" restores my faith in my capacity to love. How, when you invited me to your place in Ann Arbor, I physically held myself back from grabbing your shoulders, and I hate PDA. How much you feel like my older brother every time you buy me coffee and side-hug me about whatever I'm currently most upset about. How you sought me out after our fight to tell me I was right, and that's the nicest thing a man has ever done for me. 

I'd say that crossing boundaries for you has given me self discovery. Skylar would call it aggressing -- crossing the spread, in finance terms. But all I know is that it's like lightning spotting you from the front of the floor, watching you steal mints from other people's desks and wondering if you like me the way I adore you. I'm entitled to one stupid decision, I argue, and so you are mine, but it doesn't feel stupid. It feels like if I were older this could be my life -- surprise birthday parties I know you would hate, flirty texts right before market close about how good I look in blue. You'd call me wifey and it wouldn't make me panic, I'd wave and you wouldn't look as though your ship was sinking. The company likes risk-takers and free-thinkers, you tell me, wouldn't you like to try on my titanium rings and see how it feels to be one? I would. I think about the invisible string theory -- how many times have I wished to fall in love with a man who could quote Ayn Rand on this very blog? -- and think maybe Taylor Swift was onto something. But we'll never know.

This summer has been the high school experience I never had, but maybe always deserved. I spend weekends with my work phone buried deep in a backpack I won't touch until Monday morning, exploring the city with a tote bag and damp hair. Spontaneous dinners in K-Town and ranting about those in charge of us. I'm so scared that I lose a part of me every time I leave, but so scared that I will never find myself if I stay. There are people here who have been here for forty years. There are people here who say this place has saved their lives, in all the ways. They met their wives here. They had their affairs here. They hang their college jerseys on the pillars between the monitors. These four walls -- I could celebrate every month passing with cronuts and champagne, ring in promotions with the few who got me through the first summer. I can see a future that starts and ends right here, a wedding with you all invited and a house in Long Island for the weekends and summer nights. If I'm not careful, I'll wake up and we'll be fifty and I might not even hate it. 

It's not my future, at least not right now. But I will be a significantly worse person without it. The same way Beli saved my life, dragging me head-first out of a depression and thirty-pound weight loss spiral, Morgan Stanley brought me back to life. I see future CEOs and CFOs in my darling intern class, and know I'll sit across them in conference rooms for years to come and stare at them with wonder and amazement, on the other side of the table hoping they know how much I love them. How hard I'm rooting for them. How deeply I need them to change the world in the ways they want to. How much I want to be there when they do, but how little I can say about it all. If I loved you less, maybe...