The Only Constant Is Change

Always Running, Never Stopping

"Calmdowncalmdowncalmdown…breathe!" you tell yourself, taking a deep breath and trying unsuccessfully to calm your thudding heart. You had barrelled your way out of your film studies class (and probably knocked over a few surprised freshmen) as you had hurried towards the health sciences library on the other side of campus. Reaching the quiet and calm of the library, you had thrown yourself into a study carrel where you had proceeded to sit and stare anxiously at your phone. After running through all the possible (terrible, doomsday-like) scenarios of how Nathan could possibly respond to Lauren's tweet, you still hadn't checked your twitter.

What if he had replied with a 'wtf?'; even worse, what if he had replied in caps lock, with extra punctuation to emphasize his disgust? (WTF??????!?!) And god forbid he reply with the dreaded ':S' emoticon… that one was always the worst, because really, who even knew what that face was supposed to mean. Was anyone even capable of pulling a face even remotely similar to :S?

The midday sun shone brightly from the window next to you, glinting off the darkened screen of your phone, casting a glaring beacon of light that practically screamed "READ THE DAMN TWEET."

No… no, no, no.

You turn your attention back to the article you're supposed to be reading for your neurobiology course, skimming over the title, 'The psychology and neurobiology of addiction: an incentive–sensitization view '

Hah, addiction! That was definitely what Nathan was shaping up to be. Perhaps Lauren had been right in calling the entire situation the Nathan Adrian 'thing'.

Your eyes skim blankly over beginning of the article again, and you catch yourself rereading the same sentence, comprehending absolutely nothing. "Oh screw it." you sigh in exasperation, reaching for your phone and hitting the wake button. Your heart starts its nervous thumping again as you open the twitter app, navigating to your new tweets. You scroll hurriedly past the myriad of invitations to various keggers, ragers, and parties, past the random tweets from your friends back in NY, and you can practically feel your heart stop as you reach Nathan's tweet…

"Down girl! At least buy me dinner first, @AllegraGrace"

You squint in confusion at the tweet, rereading it then setting your phone back onto the table. Down… girl?… Buy him dinner first?

You sit there with your legs curled underneath you, focused on nothing in particular as your mind takes his tweet and just runs with it. Are you supposed to be laughing, is it humorous? Or are you supposed to be offended, did he just imply you were some kind of animal? Down girl? REALLY?

And then it hits you. "Why the fuck do I even care? Why am I acting like a 12 year old over this..." you mumble out loud, pushing your phone away in protest. Even though it's the middle of the day, you feel tired and drained. Rubbing your eyes, you remember Lauren's words from earlier, "he's a hit it and quit it kind of guy."

"I don't need to go through that again." you sigh bitterly, the memories of your last year at NYU flooding back in a torrent of mixed emotions.

Hit it and quit it. Not exactly what had happened, but to be frank, would probably have been preferred to what had happened. As much as you tried to convince yourself otherwise, the deciding factor in your decision to transfer to UCBerkeley wasn't the wanderlust or a desire for a change of scenery, it was because you were once again, running from your problems.

The relationship between you and Christopher had started out unconventionally anyways, he was one of your TAs for goodness sake. Granted, that one issue hadn't seemed so problematic when you had found yourself frantically tearing the clothes off of his rugby-toned body. Nor had it stopped the two of you from drunkenly hooking up. That one drunken mistake (was it?) had catalyzed a series of sober hook ups, and somewhere along the road, you had started to develop more than just physical feelings towards him. You began to care emotionally, and then you had found yourself in a serious relationship. It was, for a lack of a better word, perfect. Friends had not so jokingly dubbed the two of you a power couple; Chris, the rugby star with a promising career in law, and Allie, the social butterfly with an equally promising career in medicine.

You could still clearly remember the night your perfect relationship had come crumbling down around you. It was the day after your last final, and Chris had just returned to NY from a month spent abroad in Germany. It was a Friday night, and the two of you had planned to keep it low-key, go to some fancy restaurant, then go for drinks. For once, you were ready before he was, and you were idly fooling around on his ipad while he was showering. You had called out for him to hurry up ('What have you been doing in the shower for the past half hour hmm? Masturbating?') while opening up the facebook app to check your messages.

And there it was. He had forgotten to sign out of facebook, and right there in his messages, were a slew of nudes from random girls. Google translate wasn't terribly helpful in deciphering the german sexting, but even the chopped up translation was clear enough. Chris had cheated on you. Not with one random slut, but a whole horde of them while in Germany.

That's when you had made your decision. You hadn't even confronted him, leaving his place in tears, calling a cab home. Then you had haphazardly packed your bag, stopping to book a flight to California. In perhaps your one act of acknowledgement of what happened, you had returned to his ritzy condo in Manhattan to tear the necklace he had given you from your neck, throwing it at his doorstep. And then there you were, on a plane bound for California, leaving your life in NY behind and steadfastly holding back the tears that threatened to spill over your eyes at any moment.

Always running from your problems, never stopping.