Is something this good possible?

I kept telling my friends, "I don't know why he likes me."

Two summers ago, in June, I celebrated my 27th birthday by getting so drunk in Napa, California that I gave my Uber driver my phone number. A few months later, in September, my ex-boyfriend from college told me that he was planning to propose to his girlfriend. Having been intentionally single for years, I suddenly felt like I was losing a race I didn't even know I was in.

When an emotional late night phone call, I asked my ex to marry me instead, and he said no.

The following month, from Back in Palo Alto, where I was in my second year of medical school, I met Tom at a party. He was the most attractive man I had ever seen. I couldn't keep my mouth shut about him, so my classmate pushed me over to him and said, “Marina, Tom,” and he left. He looked at me and smiled, and I knew right away it was going to work.

"I like your necklace," I said in pointing to a pendant he wore on a chain, the first of many occasions when my usual charisma around men would be replaced by clumsy awkwardness in his presence.

We talked and danced for hours, and I drove him home at 2 a.m. He asked for my number and said, "Good night?"

< p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">Over the next few weeks, life with Tom was life at its most most extreme and exciting, making everything else boring and pointless. In early November, after half-heartedly trying to take notes on esophageal pathology all morning, I met him for the most fun date I've ever had, a one-day marathon at San Francisco consisting of an art gallery, drinks with her friends, dinner at a fancy restaurant, and a concert I barely remember.

At the time we got home, I had fallen asleep on his lap and lost one of my Contacts. All night with him I couldn't stop laughing because I couldn't believe something so good was happening to me.

Tom was different from everyone I had dated. He was confident and intentional, kissed me hello and goodbye, didn't want me to be his mother or his therapist. He took me to expensive restaurants and left a lit candle in his apartment for our return. He went to Portland for a weekend and came back with presents for me: craft beers, a handwritten note on a Bigfoot postcard, fancy chocolate, and a beanie.

Most of all, Tom was different because he was someone I sued myself, who unexpectedly reciprocated. He was ambitious but got real. Like someone who wins the lottery, I had no idea what to do next.

"I don't know why he loves me" , I kept saying to my friends.

Yet it had walls. As the weeks passed, it seemed impossible to get close to him, and I began to feel the shadowy outlines of undeniable incompatibilities. I couldn't relax with him. I wanted to be perfect, to read his mind so I could be who he wanted me to be. I hesitated to present it to my friends. Something wasn't clicking, and it made me want to sequester our relationship in its own universe, with no confounding variables.

I barely slept, jumping early every morning to grab my phone and look at what Tom sent me. The disappointment that he hadn't texted was overwhelming. I told a friend that my life had become so unrecognizable filled with anxiety that I might cut things off with Tom just to have some peace. But I knew I wasn't going to: his magnetism was so strong that I had to get out of it somehow.

A times he hadn't texted me Back in a few hours, my watch told me to relax with breathing activity.

I texted a text to my roommate: "if this ends, I won't survive."

He replied: "we'll be there to get you back you idiot."

When Tom texted me saying he would be gone for six weeks over winter break, I cried for 10 minutes. After he left, he stopped talking to me so much. On a two-hour plane ride, I repeated the same song and reread all of our lyrics to convince myself that he still loved me. Instead of studying for my final exams, I painted a watercolor version of her favorite space photo, Pale Blue Dot, and mailed it to her on her birthday with...