This is How It Happens

This is how it happens. You're shelving in Transportation one day and one of your coworkers passes by and makes a casual comment. You look up and notice that some time in the last six months he has shed the unique look that made him a cross between Jerry Garcia and Grizzly Adams and you can actually see his face - and it's a very nice face. And you realize that he's also been a bit more outgoing and less...scary. So you think about it for a little while, and one night you ask him out. You're not really that interested, but what the hell.

You go out on a few dates, and things are kind of nice, but then you wake up one morning a few weeks later and realize you are in love for the first time in years. You move in together and proceed to live in a relationship which you think of as The One. You know. The One that will last forever.

But it doesn't last forever. It lasts eighteen months, because he has some issues to work out and a lot of growing and learning to do, so he leaves you and moves out. He dates other people, but you can't and you don't. You leave Big Bookstore because you can no longer bear to work there where the other people he is now dating also work. You can't even bear to drive by Big Bookstore on your way home without crying uncontrollably, so you take alternate routes.

Six months later he is back. He moves back in. You try vainly to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. You try and try and try, but you can't and he won't. He moves out again.

* * *

This is how it happens. You are working at another branch of Big Bookstore, and you begin to realize you have a crush on another coworker. You resist. Not because you have been down this road before, but because he is totally inappropriate and completely lacking in social skills or redeeming qualities. Although you still have enough sanity to realize this, it doesn't help. Reluctantly you give in to the crush. One night, you confide your crush in another coworker. He responds by paying you such an extravagant compliment that you are forced to look at him with new eyes et voila, the old crush is extinguished. Within two weeks you are dating your confidant. You do not yet know that the extravagant compliment is one of the last nice things that your confidant turned boyfriend will ever do for you. A year and a half later, after you have helped him through some incredibly rough times, he breaks up with you by pointedly ignoring your birthday. Another Big Bookstore relationship ends.

* * *

This is how it happens. You are walking around the store with the Trainer talking about various work issues when he stops to introduce you to a new coworker. The new person gazes down at you from his perch on the sliding stairs and offers his hand and his name. The French call it the coup de foudre. You have never believed in it before but now you do, because instantly you are lost.

This is how it begins.