Month: September 2013

The thing about being fantastically good at being on one’s own is that reaching out becomes ridiculous. It becomes a sign of weakness, not viable. Sitting on my couch, sobbing compulsively, there is no one I want to call, no one who will not be inconvenienced by my sudden need of empathy. Of course they would understand. Of course it happens to everybody. The thing is, when you are the strong one, it is more than counterintuitive—it is unfeasible. The help that I need, it needs to come without me asking for it. I need someone who wants to care and support and carry me when I need it, even if those moments are indeed rare.

One night a few years ago, I got unbelievably drunk. I was having a great time and needed an escape from the stress, from the responsibilities. I ignored that moment, that shot I should not have taken. The greatest thing happened. I woke up utterly unaware of how I had gotten home. I was fully dressed, rightfully tucked in the utmost peaceful sleeping position and gently covered. I thought there is no way I put my own self to sleep like this. If I had come home alone, I would be sprawled sideways, totally naked and disheveled. I called my friend with the ever-so pleasant question: “what the fuck happened last night?”

–       Funny you should ask, I’m walking with your knight and shining armor as we speak. Wanna talk to him?

–       Yes… Wait, do I? Hello?

–       Hi.

–       Hi?

–       How’s the head my dear?

–       Oh, hey Tim*! Thank you so much for last night. I’m so sorry I got so drunk!!! * insert best embarrassed apologetic tone *

–       That’s really ok. Happens to the best of us. We should grab coffee later- maybe I can enlighten you on some things.

–       Yes, that would be lovely. Thanks again.

It only dawned on me then that I had put a target on Tim’s head half way through the night. I was going home with him, whether he was aware of that or not. Unfortunately, I ended up being the unaware one. He confessed to me later that day we had had great fun. I made him storm the stage where a band was playing, and run out wildly through the fire exit of the club. It was one of those typical Christine kind-of nights. He took me home and I fell asleep in the cab. I was so drunk he had to, as the perfect gentleman, resort to simply tucking me in. It was the gentlest anyone had been with me in a while. It compared with Joe’s hand gesture.

It was a grand gesture, utterly unexpected and exceedingly welcome. We eventually did sleep together, and it was as unpredicted. We had known each other for so long, and it had never crossed our minds before. We were not very close prior to that night, but gravitated in the same circles. He told me he had always thought of me as “so much older and professional.” I will never forget his exact words. He was older than me. I was a bartender. It seemed so unlikely to me that those would be the words he would choose to describe me. Now it resonates with my self-description as the strong one. Yet there is that contradicting side of me that made him do all those things, that person that I used to be much more often when I was younger.

That night I met a girl who would soon become someone very dear to me, Alicia*. She was my partner in crime that night, and so often since. She makes me do shots, even if reluctantly. I bring out the smoker and German-speaker in her. She is my sounding board so often and I will never be able to thank her enough for that.  She never judges me. There are people in your life that just comfort you about the state of humanity. She is one of those people. Her support is one I never need to ask for.

I think that is partly why I do not understand people who think they can get all that they need from one person. It just does not seem possible. Love should come from all around you- from every single person in your life. Attention-seekers like me cannot be satisfied by one and only person. I need people like Alicia to ask me what is going on in my life with no agenda. I need people like Tim who are genuinely kind. Your special someone gets a special kind of love, one that is more passionate, sexual, but also more volatile and complicated. That love is the one that can turn to hate. The love I share with my friends is stable as a rock. The simple reminder of this helps me stop sobbing, when I am having a crisis on my couch, strangled by loneliness. I remember my favorite girls and boys and all that they do, have done and continue to do—simply because we love each other. But enough with the cheese now. Love is necessary for life. And so is a big, hard penis when you need one.

I see myself as a misfit in the loner department. I like being alone. I travel best alone. I need time on my own to feel sane and compartmentalize my emotions, to hear myself think. Yet I am an extreme extrovert. I need people around me. I like to talk and laugh and dance and cry and drink. I love sleeping next to someone. It makes me feel that there is something in the universe stronger than me. I long for that feeling of unity, especially when it comes from the lonesome actions, like sleeping. That is the perfect combination of those two sides of me. They are difficult to mediate, specifically when I try to rationalize them. They usually coexist in me, taking turns in governing my actions and thoughts. This is why I have great friends and I would give them the world. I need them. They also know I need to be outside of the group at times. They know to let me live as the electron that depends and revolves around the centre, yet has a life of its own. They accept me as who I am, even though I sometimes have impulses to send them all to hell and run as far away as I can. They probably share that impulse towards me quite often.

Imagine the problem then when I like someone. Like truly, deeply, like them. I am torn between the need to be myself—that need for independence—and my love of love. I become addicted to the intensity of the feeling of being in love. I become another version of myself, the extrovert at its epitome. My heart then explodes into millions of sparkly pieces when I reach the state of perfect unity in lonesomeness. That state is however very fickle, and extremely difficult to achieve, because it involves two people being in perfect sync. When does that ever happen, you ask? And you are right to. Almost never. But sometimes, some wonderful times, the stars align and nothing compares. The rest of my life I spend longing for those moments, those feelings, bargaining solitude and suffocating togetherness. Most of the time I choose to be alone in crowded rooms. That is the red thread of my life.

As always however, bargaining with yourself is highly unpleasant. It is compromising your gut feeling, feeling sorry for yourself and painting extraordinary pictures that are but faintly based in reality, all at the same time. People are happiest when they face who they truly are as a person and stop bargaining. When you are truly honest with yourself, nothing can touch you—except for that which is stronger, greater than you. As I was sitting on the patio in Croatia, drinking and dwelling in my heartbreak, I felt unworthy. I felt that something, the Gods or the stars had sent me a sign that I did not deserve the good, the love that I had felt, so they pulled the rug from under me. And as my head collapsed onto the hard concrete, instead of caring for and soothing myself, my subconscious said think about what you did there, as if I had any influence on other people’s emotions. You can call it sudbina—I started writing this memoir. I started telling you my story. Maybe I was not unworthy of that relationship, maybe I was worthy of the words that needed to be written. It makes me laugh how shortsighted human beings are. Greater purpose is retroactive, when it is not sarcastic.

Yet here I am, in a much less romantic setting, with my coffee frapuccino and yet another cigarette, pondering the same question. Is the Inexplicable Man someone with a greater purpose in my life? His fickleness set me aback, but sprung me forward. He loved me. He loves me? Will I ever know? Can you trust someone who let you down and betrayed themselves? These are not rhetorical questions: they are real. I believe everyone deserves a second chance. I also believe people who give third chances just enjoy being shat on the head. That is their decision. Still second chances are tricky. Why would I give up on someone for a simple mistake, that they in fact needed to make to ensure it was indeed a mistake? Alright so I do not judge him for his actions, but can we ever go back? What happens when the desire for something big comes from something too small- someone too fickle? Is it ever too little, too late in matters of the heart? I cannot let myself be the kind of person that gives up on something potentially great because it might fail. I want to follow my gut feeling. The problem is, when I like someone, my addiction to the intensity, my addiction to butterflies usually takes the lead. And when the feeling has been compromised, the electron in me wants to keep spinning, never stops thinking.

I am giving him a second chance and as I do so, I am forced to reconsider the choices I have made up until now. And by forced I mean my fucked-up over-thinking-crazed brain is unable to stop itself. What made me, on one of my last days in Europe that summer, accept a breakfast invitation with the one man who had many years previous, also left me for his ex? I bumped into Damir* one night in my hometown and he insisted we catch up in the next couple of days. We had dated for a week a very long time ago. I never even had sex with him. We did however dance in deserted streets to music that existed only in our heads. We had held hands walking and exchanging the most magnificent words. He was a musician and a master of words. Not in the sense I think about words now, but in a poetic sense. His messages to me were art, quite simply. Unfortunately, he had that baggage that came back to get him. I only realized the parallels between my brief fling with Damir and my situation with Mr. Inexplicable half way through breakfast. I burst out laughing in my head. Of course, I would choose to see this man, who I adore to this day, at the same time as contemplating forgiveness and second chances in my current dilemma. The irony was overwhelming.

I made a lot of strange choices that summer, while processing the heartbreak and the meanings of my life path up to that point. Many of the situations I found myself in were highly morally questionable, if not outright wrong. Self-defense, self-reassurance or identity building, or whatever it was. I regret none of them. I wanted more, and maybe I still do. It was me searching for that intensity, for that connection that was lost and I was missing. And now, the frappucino has become a glass of wine, and I am offered that connection back. Yes, it has been compromised; it is not the same. But isn’t that what I had been doing all along, compromising, bargaining? Oh well, this connection is honest; all cards are on the table. There might be too many, and I might not know which game to play, but it is our game. I have played excessive amounts of cards that were not even mine to begin with. It is time to start writing my own rules, in chalk, with question marks at the end, and a wet cloth always at hand. At least they will be mine, part of the story.