As you may recall, this summer marked a relationship milestone: Going On Vacation Together.

I had planned to use this post, and perhaps the next two or three, to recap the trip and examine and analyze the various relationship stumbling blocks that occurred, but, as it turns out, there's nothing to write about. It was a lovely two weeks in which Mike and I did nothing but have a good time and not get tired of each other.

Instead, I will share some thoughts on packing.

Being the kind of girl who does not overpack, the kind of girl who does not bring five bags and expect her boyfriend to carry them while she traipses along in wholly unsuitable shoes is, I think, a good thing. Jake absolutely did not appreciate the joy and the wonder that is Alice's Impressive Packing Ability, and that was one of the many things wrong with our relationship.

Of course, packing in such a way involves somewhat obsessive planning. What Mike would think of this, especially when he saw the little outfit diagrams I make, I didn't know. So I sent him an email detailing what I was doing, thinking, "It's best he know this now, before he stumbles across the drawings and wants to know why I've labeled pictures of my T-shirts."

Did packing so impressively lead to what can only be described as the most marvelous vacation ever? Or was it because this particular relationship is everything I thought didn't really happen in real life?

I suspect the latter, myself.

Traveling together. This opens up all kinds of possibilities for discovery. You're really together when traveling. Proximity and the logistics of this trip means that Certain Things will come up.

We'll be hiking. I have no stamina. At all. This was not true when I was going to yoga every day, but that's lapsed somewhat, and my wind was the first thing to go. I'm going to be the sad little puffing girl who can't keep up.

It's going to be hot. I get sweaty. I always feel like I'm the sweatiest person in the room. When the room is hot, that is. For a brief, shining couple of months, I worked with a guy who was sweatier than me and we bonded in our ickiness. No one likes sweaty. I've been assured that everyone thinks they're the sweatiest person in the room, but I don't think that's true.

There's the bench thing. I love benches. I can't pass a bench strategically aimed at a scenic spot without sitting on it, at least for a few seconds. I mean, if someone took the trouble to aim a bench at something, the least I can do is sit there for a minute and appreciate it.

Thank God he already knows about the peeing thing. I have no problem peeing outside, but I'm going to have to ask him to cover his ears.

Luckily, the whole video game thing, which I have kept impressively under wraps thus far, will not be an issue whilst in another country.

When you start dating, you realize there are a number of things you don't necessarily want the other party to know about — at least, not at first. Habits, tendencies, things you're mildly embarrassed about, things you're not sure will go over well, things that didn't go over well with the last partner. They're small, yes — not really that big a deal in the grand scheme of things — but you're not necessarily eager to share them.

I mean, you can love and trust someone and still not want to them to know you have a really, really hard time peeing when you think anyone can hear.

Since we're in a long distance relationship, when Mike and I see each other we stay in each other's apartments. This means we're together a lot of the time. This means he's figured a lot out already.

And no, I can't pee if I think anyone can hear. Or if I think someone's waiting for the bathroom. Obviously, this had to come out into the open early on. He hasn't stopped rolling his eyes, but he has let me pile pillows on his head before I head to the bathroom.

He's found out how I feel about jammies. In that I like them — a lot. In that I tend to come home from work, put them on, and stay in them the rest of the day. In that I avoid getting dressed as long as possible over the weekend.

He knows the house kind of revolves around the cats.

I've had to admit, recently, that I have a number of friends I only know through the Internet.

He knows I smoke sometimes.

These things have all come to light. None of them, of course, have been a big deal, but all of them were things I was reluctant to share. They are all things that may not have been learned as soon as they were if we hadn't been sharing a space.

In less than a month, we're taking a trip together. There's no hiding when you're traveling. What will come to light then?

Over the past year and a half or so, I've gotten very comfortable being alone, doing things alone. Some things, I've found, are better by myself. I've come to like my own company. I've found that I prefer the quiet, prefer solitude.

Traveling, for example. That first trip alone, to Wales, was very much a ‘well, no one can stop me from doing this, so I'm going to do it to prove I can' kind of trip. It turned out, a lot of that trip was marvelous because I was alone. I like traveling alone. I like not having to worry about other people's preferences, comfort, plans. I like eating when I want, stopping when I think something is pretty, sitting on as many strategically placed benches as I want. And I am a sucker for a strategically placed bench.

How, I've been wondering, will I do traveling with someone else?

In June, we'll find out. June marks one of those relationship milestones — going on a trip together. Mike and I are going to Greece for two weeks.

After having been in a relationship for so many years with someone who did not want to go places with me — too expensive, ‘just wanted to stay home', whatever really lay beneath that — it's startling, a little, to be with someone who wants to do this with me. Startling, but wonderful.

At the same time, I wonder — how will this be? I've learned how to do this alone, how do I learn to do it not alone?

I suppose it's the same as getting into a new relationship, in many ways. You get comfortable being alone, living alone. You start to really enjoy that feeling — the being surrounded by only your own stuff, your power over your surroundings, the never needing to compromise. Figuring out, little by little, how to let someone in.

After my Ingrid Michaelson song post, someone commented, "It's just a song people."

I loved the responses to that, but I especially loved this one:

"And a poem is just a poem? And a painting is just pigment on a canvas and (so the song goes) life is just to die? Sorry, I don't buy that. I think it's good, great, wonderful to look to art, music, architecture, nature — all these things — to try to find or understand our connections to one another and to find some meaning to go with our experiences."

I spend more time doing this these days — finding new meanings in pieces I've already known. Songs, especially — whether they're about splitting up, or, more recently, being in a relationship that makes me happy — songs I've known forever I hear again and suddenly understand, suddenly feel like they're connected to me.

Suddenly, there are songs that mean something. Books that suddenly make sense. Poems that make me feel like I know where I'm going.

Because I like that — that feeling of connection — and because I want to irritate the commenter who thinks songs mean nothing but a paycheck to the songwriter, I'd like to spend a little time this week on those connections.

That's the thing about major life shifts: There's new meaning to find, and there are others trying to find the same meanings. Sometimes they say it better than we do.

I've been listening to Ingrid Michaelson all week. One particular CD — it's like she's crawled into my head and is digging about it in, only in a catchy/lovely/song lyrical kind of way. My past two years are there in their entirety, neatly, in 10 tracks or so.

This one song — "Corner of Your Heart" — I can't stop listening to it. I can't stop because it upsets me so much, like a bruise you can't stop pressing. It's beautiful and haunting and infinitely disturbing. I can't turn it off.

"There's a corner of your heart just for me," it goes. "I will pack my bags just to stay in the corner of your heart. Just to sleep underneath your bed. Just to occupy one minute of your day."

Now, I don't know if this intended to be a love song. Maybe it is. Maybe to other people there is romance in it.

But to me, it's horrifying. It's everything that was wrong about my relationship: me just wanting something, something, anything that would tell me I was loved back. It's me being offered only a corner, being willing to take that. Being happy with that. Giving up so much in hopes of that one minute.

I can't stop listening to it because I want to know if that's what it's meant to mean. Because I recognize myself in it. And because I'm so far away from that place now and don't want to go anywhere near it again.

Also, it's a really pretty song.

Lindsay knows exactly what to do when a friend is getting divorced. She doesn't press. She doesn't pester with questions. She doesn't fill the space with reassurances or aspersions - she allows silence. She allows time. She knows that what's needed is normality.

At the same time, she'll let you that, anytime you need, it, you can call her and she'll drive out and spend the day with you, or the afternoon, or the hour. She'll take you to lunch, she'll go to a movie, she'll just sit with you so you're not alone.

When you move to a new place, she's the one that will spend the first night with you so you're not alone, making the weekend into a party instead of a chore, keeping any of it from being sad. She'll unpack boxes. She'll organize your closet and your kitchen.  

She is, in short, an invaluable friend. 

The other reason to look to Lindsay is that she has a marriage that makes me rethink my certainty that relationships can't last. Years in, she and her husband are still in love, still happy, still right for each other. They make room for each other's lives while still sharing them. They compromise. They talk. They are each other's best friends, and they still make out.  

There are people like this in the world. There are relationships like that out there. This is good to remember. 

Counting "divorced" as one of my personal adjectives is a bizarre thing. Like it or not, this is now a huge part of who I am. I don't like this as an identifier, but there's no getting around how much this has shaped me. You don't spend 15 years with someone and lose them without it becoming a part of you. But still — I'm tall. I'm a teacher. I'm divorced. This is a descriptor. This is uncomfortable.

I was about to meet Mike's parents, and realized this was how they know me — I'm someone from college. I'm someone from California. I'm someone who's divorced. Worse, actually, I'm someone who is getting divorced.

I had no idea how to bring this up when I started dating. When do you tell someone? You bring it up too early, it's, "Whoah, hey, that's a lot of information for someone I just met." Too late, "How could you not tell me this earlier?" The problem is, of course, compounded by the fact that the thing isn't final. I tried casually slipping it into conversation: "We used to do so and so — oh that was back when I was married," but was never able to pull it off successfully.

What was nice about Mike was that he has known me since college, so there was no news to break. There was, though, that horrible moment way at the beginning, when he said, "So, when did your divorce become final?" And having to answer, "Well, it's not."

Eventually, this will be so far in the past that it will cease to be a top-three descriptor. Eventually, everything will have been finalized for so long that I won't have thought about it in ages. Eventually, I'll stop worrying about what parents and new friends and colleagues think. This day, honestly, can't come soon enough.

Turns out, when traveling, I'm astonishingly antisocial.

My solitude was premeditated in Wales, as I was determined to learn how to be alone. I figured I'd feel differently in Vienna. It's a city, after all. It doesn't grind to a halt at 5 pm. I wasn't planning on sitting on a hill and contemplating my life; I'd just be a regular tourist.

I did meet a lot of people. Some, I did not take to. Jim from New Jersey and his friend Thomas, a local organ player, for example. They chatted me up at a bar one night, until they asked what I taught. I said, "drama." They thought I said, "German," and there followed a very confusing five minutes, after which they lost all interest.

Also Pepe, from Kosovo, who followed me around the street for a good 10 minutes, grinning widely, before approaching me, telling me his life story, and asking if I would get coffee with him.

But many people were lovely. A group about my age had a brief, friendly conversation with me at a café one night. A couple from Albany shared my pension breakfast table one morning and invited me to join them at the museums that afternoon. I found, though, that I didn't want to join anyone. I liked wandering alone. I liked being quiet. I liked not worrying about pleasing anyone but me.

What I started thinking about on this trip is the difference between a need and a preference. Turns out, I don't need anyone else around, and, quite often, I prefer the solitude.

Now that I know this, I can figure out when it is I prefer to have company. It was okay that I got lonely some nights in Vienna, and I would rather have had someone there, because I know that I don't need someone there.

I spent much of the flight from San Francisco to Vienna analyzing the difference between setting out on this trip and heading to Wales.

Leaving for Wales had a strange feeling to it. I was headed across the world, and there was nothing, really, tying me to home. I felt strangely adrift, without a tether — just this little floating dot. After having been a half of a whole for so long, it was just me. No one was waiting for me to come back. No one needed to know I had landed safely. It wasn't a bad feeling, it was just strange.

I didn't feel that way this time. The floating-in-my-bubble sense was gone completely. Why? Was it because I had already done this, and so knew I could? Or was it because I'm in a relationship, so that tether is back?

I had always chafed at the idea of being back in a relationship. I didn't want the responsibility, the ties, the obligations. I wanted to be free to go where I wanted, to do what I wanted, to not have to answer to anyone.

Surprisingly, that tether wasn't chafing. It didn't feel like an obligation. It wasn't even a strong enough feeling to really register, just an, "Oh, this is different."

Going to Wales was largely an act of defiance. Maybe now I've gotten past that.