twenty-something

So I'm working out today, sweating away on an Arc Trainer, pseudo-ex-boyfriend-type-person Duncan next to me. Kelly Clarkson pops onto my iPod. It's Miss Independent. And I'm suddenly slightly dizzy. I close my eyes for a second and think, "I'm gonna pass out." But it passes. And so does the song. And, soon, Dunc leaves his machine.

It's then that I start to wonder what was up with that moment. It wasn't physical -- I feel fine, really -- but I was overwhelmed for a few seconds.

I think about June 14, 2003. The annual June Birthday Bash in Malden, a.k.a. FlipFest. It was the summer after I graduated from college and five months into everything with Duncan. On his last night at school a month earlier, he finally told me he loved me. The next day, he left and we ended our closeted affair as just friends.

But a month later, he's visiting me in Massachusetts for the party. We are in the dark, in the bedroom I share with Yelli, on my futon mattress in the corner. The party outside is still in full swing, hours after it started. We're drunk, and so we kiss hungrily, touch desperately, and... we cry. We profess our love. He says I'm amazing, that I mean everything to him. He says he wants to be my boyfriend. It is everything I never thought I could have with him.

It's then that Mike, from the party, bangs on the door -- "Miss Independent is playing! It's your favorite song!" he shouts to me -- and then he opens it, finding us alone in the dark, but seeing nothing. He laughs, embarrassed, and shuts the door. Soon after, we face the party, red-faced, trying to make people believe we were just talking.

Today, on the Arc Trainer, everything -- past, present, and future with Dunc, everything from our first meeting to his first "I Love You," our first "date" to our last fight, everything from being content with him to being ashamed of my gut -- it all hit me with that song, in that moment at the gym. And just like everything else...

It passed.