Revolting Door

I had a fight with one of my best friends back home. It reminded me how much it sucks and hurts to have a fight with someone close to you. It’s nothing like having a fight with someone you don’t really care about that much. It’s having a fight with your past, with an older part of yourself.

I told her that sometimes she makes me not want to call her when I get back home, which makes going home an even more undesirable process. She totally went off on me and played all the dirty cards including “you’re not a real friend if you’re offending me like that” and so on and so forth.

I know I’ll call her when I go back and it’s all going to be fine again. But even though we did keep in touch over the past seven years, we couldn’t stop something major from changing. Being so close to someone is emotionally draining. I am not looking forward to long hours of conversation about mundane things. I am not looking forward to long hours of sitting on the couch with her wasting time watching sleazy pop-folk videos on TV. I am not looking forward to the back scratching she and her mom and her sister shower me with, leaving me feeling drained on the couch, with a mixture of embarrassment and undeserved sense of accomplishment.

We crave close relationships but when we get them we want to run away. Sometimes it’s just easier to live with people who are just not that into you. If it doesn’t get you depressed, it boosts your determination somehow. Another paraphrase of the old cliché “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”  

I remember I must’ve been three. Laying in bed one morning. My mom had just almost finished helping me change, and I was stubbornly refusing her help for this last button I wanted to button on my own. That’s the first time I remember dreaming about being a grown up, dreaming about being independent. I remember I asked my mom how old do I need to be to be independent, and she said 13. When you’re three and you dream about being 13, it seems like a grand, impossible time that is in a future so distant it seems more improbable to happen than a fairy tale does.

Later on, I remember having this thirst for independence all the way through middle and high school.

Nowadays, I’m not that independent. I’m pretending to be and it comes out as being hard and rough but that’s because I know I’m loved. If I was all alone I don’t know if I would be that “independent”.

This morning I had the weirdest exchange of about fifteen emails with a married woman (supposedly) who replied to my purely platonic (and I mean it), female to female, massage ad on craigslist. By the eights or ninth email the conversation took a very well defined lesbian swing including bra sizes and details on hairstyle… and I mean *hairstyle*. I can’t believe this… It is the only reply from a female after several guy replies and it still couldn’t remain asexual. We are all a bunch of horny animals.

On my way to submitting my work permit docs I ran into the friend who’s not my friend anymore. I could’ve just walked around him and pretend I didn’t see him but I stopped and said hi and he actually seemed pleased to see me. What a retarded story. Remember - this friendship wasn’t real.

The work permit session took ages and as much as I enjoyed the stylish room with one brown wall, heavy wooden furniture and power point slides in dark pink, I was about ready to leave fifteen minutes into the session which lasted for two hours. Had coffee with two new girlfriends - one from my country and one from Russia. The Russian girl was sweet and had an exciting personality but the other girl seemed like a dull, hypocritical, judgmental person, and I felt yet again how much of a stranger I would be if I were to go back and live in my country. Thank you but no, thank you. I’m doomed to be a stranger everywhere I go. Or something dramatic like that.

Some skinny dude kind of asked me out in the gym and I hurried out. Congrats on having the courage to ask a girl out, etc etc but again - no, thank you. “Unless you have a boyfriend or you’re married…”, he said and I did take advantage of this and said I had a boyfriend.

This spaced out day ended with a bittersweet sale. I sold two Sigur Ros tickets and ended up not going to the concert myself. I was supposed to go with T and I didn’t wanna sit next to some stranger I just ripped off instead. So I sold the second ticket too. It felt sad… this was something like the last chance to do something that T and I would’ve enjoyed doing together (him more than me, let’s be honest). The truth is, if he didn’t tell me about this concert, I wouldn’t ever go and maybe even never know about it. After I sold the second ticket, I turned around and walked - slowly, pretending to be cool, although I wanted to speed up and run away fast - leaving the growing crowd behind, overhearing the people I just sold my tickets to meeting, laughing, figuring out that I just completely screwed one person over and gave a ticket to the other for super cheap:) They were a boy and a girl, young short tanned cute blond blue eyed college kids - it would be awesome if they get along. I’ve always liked to play matchmaker, there is something very satisfying in knowing that two people found love (or, cough, whatever they found) because of you.

Last night I had a dream. T was trying to give me a back rub but no matter how he was doing it and what techniques he was applying, it never felt right. It wasn’t giving me the relief I normally want a massage for, and I was getting a little irritated that he couldn’t get it right. On the other hand I felt cozy and warm in his presence, happy he’s there; the scene in my dream is blurrily surrounded by soft gray-beige warmness, probably due to the two big cuddly comforters I sunk under last night. I just want to sink in my sadness, write about it, think about it – just take however long it takes to get over this

This morning I went to the gym. On the way I noticed the ankle bracelet he gave me still on my ankle, dangling over my sock and into my shoe. I stopped at a bench to remove it, afraid I might lose it. I kept holding it in my hand the whole way to the gym, and the whole way back, thinking about our friendship, trying to remind myself why we’re not great together, and generally being sad that our relationship just somehow didn’t work out and wishing that it did. It still seems too easy, even inviting, to call him and say let’s undo this. I still can’t or don’t want to believe I have to let go.

I know how sentimental and melancholic these posts sound but that’s how I feel and I can’t just stop being pathetic and start being awesome like an all too well known character from a favorite show.

Maybe I am so desperately wanting to be loved and clinging to that need so often and so much that I stop being myself and forget how to just live. It becomes an obsession and every little thing I do, every little thought I think resonates with that need. That need starts depicting who I am, and that’s scary.

I know meeting new friends is the way to go. It’s not difficult for me to make new acquaintances (note how I don’t say friends) but I just wish that had meaning to me. Because it doesn’t. What’s the point in superficial acquaintances? You put in energy and thought and a little bit of yourself really into getting to know someone new and then off they go their own way and never turn around. For me real, deep friendships are what makes me happy, what’s meaningful. Getting to know the person, really caring for the person, and the reciprocity of all this. Sadly, this thought scares most people, if not all people, and they run away. I just don’t understand what’s the obsession of people with superficiality. Is it a self-preservation thing, to avoid deep meaningful friendships, or do people just really feel better off on their own?

Ones of my favorite moments were when Beth and I met outside of school. We met in Pittsburgh and in Chicago on different occasions, both times she came to visit me. I loved the way people thought of us as a couple. Her attractive toned body, boyish beauty, short rusty-colored hair. We never fooled around or anything, maybe held hands a couple of times but only in a friendly way. We both realized what we looked like though. I loved how people thought we were dating without us even trying to convey anything like that - just by walking down the street, side by side, the way we slightly turned to face each other to be able to hear each other better over the noise of the city, the way we slowed down or even stopped to bring across a point that seemed really important at the time.

Last time I saw Beth I visited her back in school. We had an amazing first day catching up and a second day going straight down the hill of misunderstanding. It felt like one day of me was enough for her and she needed to move on to more important things in her life. She seemed to feel so much more grown up and mature after her experiences abroad, after finishing an unsuccessful relationship and moving on to an extroverted and persuasive guy. Basically everything I did that day annoyed her - the way I put a lot of coffee in the machine in the morning, the way I pronounced words, probably my voice. I knew the more reserved I acted the more I pissed her off because she seemed to think of herself as “evolved” and wanted to go out and socialize and meet people and be surrounded by people who laugh and make her laugh but I wasn’t that person then because I was tired and stressed out immensely for not being able to take a loan at that time. In fact I thought those two days were ones of my last days here, I was considering flying home unaccomplished and broke, but she didn’t seem to understand that or care because she doesn’t face any of these problems.

I sent her a packet of rich German coffee from home for her birthday. I thought, whatever will be will be, and I decided not to be disappointed if she doesn’t respond. And she didn’t. For a month and a half. She called last night and left a voicemail. I was happy to hear from her of course but I didn’t feel impatient to return the call. Her voicemail was truly nice but it was like from a slightly different person - no umms, no pauses of any sort, very consecutive and not disrupted train of thought, extremely together. Also louder voice (loud enough to understand every word), succinct good-bye. I think she thinks she’s surpassed me in some way and I have fallen behind. Or maybe I feel that way, I don’t know.

* * *

On a different note, sometimes I wonder if going back to Europe will bring me out of the slight deadlock I find myself into way too often here. I don’t know. Maybe I have to try but I still feel the time is not right. I’m not quite there yet. If I go now, I’ll come back, I know. I feel that the time will be right some time in the future, but I still don’t know when.