Life Worth Living

Sometimes I’m afraid that our relationship has no meaning. Sometimes I’m afraid it lacks passion. Sometimes I wonder if he’ll tire of my bubblyness and prefer someone with more fire. Sometimes I’m not certain I’m still being myself. Sometimes I’m terrified that in being with him I stop loving myself. Often, I wonder how long we can last.

And that scares me. And that’s not fair to him, to this relationship, to myself. And that’s when I question whether I’m doing all this right.

But if there’s thing I’m good at (often to a fault), it’s living in the moment. I’m going to try to fold another little proposition in there. For.

Living for the moment.

Today my Kabarett class had our final “performance”, which consisted of a showcase of our our two most rehearsed poems as a sort of interlude to some sort of high school German test awards show…thing. Afterward the half of us who could make it hung out and bbq-d in the backyard of one of my classmates. Just like at last semester’s German dinner, I found that it was so much easier to get to know and chat with the students when we were speaking English, and just like last time, I got the feeling that the semester is ending just as I’m starting to become friends with these people. It makes me sad to think about the friendships I could’ve gained if only we were speaking English from the get-go.

—

Leone, nibbling at my shoulder today, said I smelled and tasted smoky (from standing next to a grill for 2 hours). I don’t know that smoky’s a very appropriate scent on a girl, but I rather liked that.

—

He asked me today if I wanted to take the bus home or him to drive me back. “I want you to want something,” he insisted, referring to my easygoing attitude. When I told him it really didn’t matter, he said “Sometimes you’re too laid back.” He said it lightly, but I blanched, because even though I sometimes feel the exact sentiment, here he is taking one of (what I think to be) my best qualities and casting a negative light on it. Sitting on the bus thinking about it, I was irrationally scared that being in a relationship would make me stop loving myself. For that split second, I wanted to run.

—

I was looking at the pictures from the party Buttercup, Jasmine, and Daisy went to last Friday while I was hanging out with Leone, and it made me sad because it looked like they’d had so much fun. I’d honestly planned on going (I even picked out my outfit for Leone’s friend’s birthday based on what I would wear to the party right after) but Leone convinced me at the last moment to stay. The pictures, though, made me miss my friends. And I feel like such  a bad one.

—

Summer is rapidly approaching, and the weather reflects it (at least it does when we’re on this side of the rain-sun-rain-sun pendulum). If I hadn’t been so sun-starved since freaking November I would have complained loudly about today’s glorious heat. Instead, I loved it. Doesn’t agree with my allergies though.

—

I haven’t done much work to speak of since 2 weeks ago. This is a bad thing, because in the next three weeks I will have a 13-15 page research paper, a 7-9 page theory paper, a 3-5 page day-paper, and two finals. I haven’t yet begun research or reading for any of the papers.

After sulking and wallowing for a bit after the show last night Leone came over as planned to bring me back to his apartment for the night. He perceived almost immediately that I wasn’t quite myself, and that frightened me just a little bit. Of course there was the juvenile part of me that wanted him to take notice and to make it all better, but to say that yesterday’s disappointment was fabricated for the express purpose of seeking attention would be a lie. Definitely I wasn’t feeling quite myself. Definitely I wasn’t consciously playing it up or even really aware it was discernible. What surprised me was that he knew. What was alarming was the fact that my boyfriend of two weeks could tell ten minutes into the evening that I was feeling down. I can’t pinpoint exactly why I’m slightly disconcerted by it, but if I could hazard a guess I would say it’s because I’m the type of girl who is scared of letting a guy get too close emotionally. But in any case the feeling wasn’t a strong or lasting enough one to delve into any further than I already have.

So. Leone asked me what was wrong, and I have to say that as someone who is as good at talking emotions as she is doing calculus (that is to say, not at all), I was actually pleased at how bluntly I replied:

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Tonight I got up on stage and in front of 500 40 people sang, danced, recited, and shouted, all in German. It was exhilarating, at least if you don’t count the parts where we awkwardly scrambled around on stage trying to find our places and whispered frantically to each other: “What comes next? What comes next?” It was throw-all-dignity-and-caution-into-the-wind and damn-I-wish-we’d-had-another-week-to-practice. But I mean, it was an experience, and if we weren’t as polished as we could’ve been (far from it), at least we didn’t fail disastrously. And people laughed. And there’s always tomorrow.

In case anyone’s wondering, only one person that I invited showed up. Rosemary said she would come tomorrow, and she’s writing a paper, so that’s fine. Leone was at practice, and that’s fine too. Jasmine and Rose plumb couldn’t make it, and Buttercup had a headache and didn’t want to sit by herself. One face in the audience that I knew, and it was that of The Runner, whom I’ve only talked to sporadically this semester, and whom I only invited out of desperation two hours before the show, fully expecting him to decline politely. It meant an awful lot to me that he came.

Honestly, it took a little bit of the hurt away, the disappointment that was brought on by having all of my friends absent while I made a fool of myself on stage, performing what is for better or worse the culmination of an entire semester’s work. Rosemary’s and Leone’s reasons, I get, and besides they promised to show tomorrow. But Jasmine is one of my two best friends here, and I don’t think I’d be wrong in guessing that she declined without even really considering it. (I had to rehearse last night so I had Buttercup bring along the flyer to Classics Friends Dinner). And Buttercup? Her reason amounted to “I won’t have anyone to sit with,” which—well, it just hurt, and hurt more in the face of how many times she’s guilted me into doing things I’d rather not do, things that took more effort, plan-changing, and traveling than would hauling her butt to the most accessible building on campus for one hour to see a free show.

But, well, that’s just how some things go, A lot of the air is taken out of my elation from having no one to run to after the show, which just makes me so much more grateful to The Runner. He understands no German, came expecting to have no one to sit with, and fiddled with his phone the entire time, but he came. And might also come to tomorrow’s show.

I was looking forward to spending the night at Leone’s today, but right now I’m just a little disheartened and don’t much find appealing the prospect of fooling around with him in bed. It’s no fault of his; I’m just in a mood where I’d really rather just curl under my own covers and get some much-needed sleep. It’s a quiet mood, not sad so much as disappointed. I’m not going to cancel on him, because I know just seeing him in an hour will make me change my mind, but for now I’m just going to languish in this feeling.

I’ve been thinking a little lately about the whole Anonymous Blog thing. I’m surprised, first of all, over how long I’ve been at it. I’ve always loved to write, and I like to talk about myself as much as the next person, yet somehow that just didn’t translate into keeping diaries. At least, not the day-to-day sort. With blogging, it’s so much faster and so much easier to go back and chop off entire ugly paragraphs, rearrange sentences, save half-finished posts for later…and I’ve never liked my own writing enough to stare at a page of it for very long.

All mechanics aside, however, my blog is merely a digital diary, and as such it makes sense to keep it anonymous. No one needs to be reading my day-to-day whining. What doesn’t make sense is why I keep my “stories” locked up here instead of showing them to the world. I’ve never really thought about it before, and I’m still not sure I understand it. For all I love to write, for all the time I spend doing it, nobody knows about it. Nobody knows I like to write: not my parents, not my friends, not my roommate, not my brother, not my boyfriend. Occasionally, on the first day of class when we’re doing an ice-breaker and told to introduce ourselves with name, major, and an interesting factoid, I say that I write short stories for fun. Even before the words are out of my mouth I cringe and hope that people don’t ask me to elaborate, because I just can’t explain any further than that. Besides, I feel safe knowing I’ll never see most of these people again, and that they won’t remember what I said, in any case.

But it just doesn’t make sense. I don’t hide my writing because I’m embarrassed of it; quite the opposite, in fact. I’m tremendously proud of some of the stuff I’ve written. The only reason I can think of to explain my reluctance to share is that writing, for me, is incredibly personal. It’s something I do for myself, and it’s something I enjoy intensely. It’s a way for me, a girl who will run away rather than show or talk about her emotions, to tap into the feelings that she’s never denied are there. The “stories” I write, as cheesy as it sounds, are a part of me, and I write for nothing more than to write. I don’t need validation from any outside source, and I don’t need praise, or appreciation, or admiration.

With that said, it’s not exactly that I shy away from telling those who are close to me. Far from it. Honestly, sometimes I even find myself looking forward to letting my new boyfriend see this side of me that up to now has never stood in the light, this part of me that I love so much.

Was going to have a completely PG 20 night with Buttercup (since LAME-O’s Jasmine, Rosemary, and Leone opted not to come) until we got a call from this guy that we met about a month ago—after I’d come back from the night mentioned in Last Night—(Wow I’m not sober enough to make sense or worry about grammar right now) and he said “come over to my place I have people coming over. It’s Saturday night, time to get it kickin’.” So we deliberated for a while, and then we headed over. We’d been drinking anyways; time to put it to good use.

We got there, and there were a few people. I remember everyone hanging out on the roof and me coming back inside, leaning out the window to peek at everyone talking about Yes Men, when one of the guys (who I knew had been coming on to me from that first night) who was roaring drunk, leaned across the window from me and said, “I’m attracted to you. Like sexually.”

“Oh…” I said. What else could I say? I wanted to tell him I had a boyfriend, but somehow it wouldn’t come out. And I kept thinking about him tonight. Leone, I mean. My boyfriend. God, that’s odd to say. I think it’s because I’ve gone 20 years without one that it feels so weird to have him. Leone. It’s hard to wrap my head around that fact, you know? I have a boyfriend. Well. I don’t know why it was so hard to spit that fact out, but it was. In fact, I never did. I had to rely on Buttercup to divulge it for me.

I’m working on it. And now I’m sleepy. So goodnight.

Laying on the bed bathed in the last rays of the departing sun, my head in the crook of his arm, his breathing slowly returning to normal, Leone said, “This is one of those moments where the world could just explode tomorrow and I’d be okay with it.”

I lifted my head from his chest to look at him. His eyes were closed, and a look of total contentment suffused his features. “Like I wouldn’t be sad if it did, you know?” he continued.

“Well, you’d be dead,” I pointed out. He shrugged his shoulders and let out a sound of complete indifference.

Allow me to overanalyze a simple statement made in a moment of sheer happiness: if the world exploded tomorrow, I’d go out with so many things undone, so many unsaid, and so many still to figure out yet. And honestly, I’m good with that. I don’t want to be done with the world yet.*

Walking home from weekly dinner today Buttercup fumed about what unfortunate timing Leone and I have with summer fast approaching and his graduation within a month (it hasn’t escaped me, let me tell you). When I told her he’d be out of the country for a month after classes ended, she asked, “What’s gonna happen with you guys then?”

I shrugged as I tore into my warm Nutella crepe. Honestly I hadn’t thought it would be a big deal. A month is a long time to be without your boyfriend, I know, and certainly it’s especially hard in new relationships when you’re not even past the “I want to see you every single day!” phase yet…but while I would rather he doesn’t go, it isn’t killing me that he is. He’s been talking and excited about going pretty much as long as I’ve known him, and I’ve been away from him for a month before. That was Winter Break, and that was fine. Anyway, there’s Aim and Facebook and Skype and even long-distance phone calls; it’s not like we’d be out of touch.

But Buttercup threw her hands up in exasperation. “What’s wrong with you?” she exclaimed. “Do you not have feelings? It’s not a crime to want to stay together.”

Taken aback, I said, “Well I would like to stay together. We just haven’t talked about it at all.” Inside I was abuzz with confusion. What was this talk about staying together? I hadn’t even considered the possibility that we’d cut each other loose while he was in Europe.

“Then say it!” Buttercup cried. “You’re always just like ‘I don’t know. I don’t care. Whatever. Que sera sera.’ You can’t always be indifferent. You have to show him that you like him or you’re going to lose him. I know it’s hard to open yourself up and scary to put yourself out there, but you have to if you want to find love. I guess if you never try you’ll  never get hurt but there really is no point to this if you don’t.”

And as she spoke I stared straight ahead, and I thought, “Yes. Yes!” That’s exactly what I’ve identified my problem as. That’s exactly what I’m trying to beat. Is it that obvious?

Apparently it is. And apparently, I have some steeling to do.

The Dilemma

On Thursday I realised that JT was supposed to visit on Friday since he had postponed last Friday’s visit due to an appointment.  Buttercup, Jasmine, and Daisy were going camping this weekend, and I was supposed to come too, but I wasn’t that excited about going because it wouldn’t be like last time, when it was just the three of us and Jasmine’s mother, the whole beach and starry sky to ourselves. It would be Jasmine’s entire family and a few family friends, and I just didn’t find the dynamic that would add up to as appealing. I felt bad about feeling relieved when camping was called off on Wednesday due to bad weather. Other reasoning aside, there was a chance that my Kabarett class would want to practice this weekend. They didn’t, but I didn’t know that until Thursday after I remembered JT’s and my tentative plans. Tentative, because our plans are always so, but plans nevertheless.

By that time Jasmine had already looked up the forecast again and declared camping back on, but of course I wasn’t sure about going. I hadn’t even technically said I would go at all; just that I probably could, but would know by Thursday. Plus, when I told him I wasn’t going camping after all, Leone had invited me to his racquetball tournament on Saturday and I’d said yes. I fretted about the decision all week: I had more reason to stay, but I knew that if I canceled Jasmine and Buttercup would be angry/sad (it didn’t help that Jasmine had just gotten over of a period of resentfulness aimed mostly toward Buttercup but some toward me as well), and also especially since it would just look like I was abandoning them now that I was dating someone, which was only half true. Camping was also a once-a-semester type deal; so was the tournament, but JT visiting not so much, even though sometimes it feels that way. I could also cancel on Leone, because even though I had said “yes” to him we hadn’t made any official plans, but I didn’t want it to seem like I was being unsupportive of the things he’s involved in or that he was just a backup plan and now that my real plans had been un-canceled I didn’t need him anymore. In addition, I actually did want to see him play. The plans with JT I had made earliest of all, but they were also the least plans-y of all, and I wasn’t even positive they wouldn’t fall through. When I divulged this all to him in a massive 7-page text message bittersweetly reminiscent of the text monstrosities of two semesters ago, he essentially said, “I’ll come if you don’t go camping.” (Not in a manipulative way, but in a “if you end up canceling your plans for me, I won’t make it so that you did it for nothing” kind of way)

I kept flip-flopping. If I went camping I couldn’t do anything else and I’d lose an entire weekend of work. If I stayed I could hang out with JT, go to the tournament, and potentially meet my Kabarett class and finish some reading. The balance was obviously tipped one way, and so I texted Jasmine and Buttercup with the bad news. Jasmine seemed terse and angry, but Buttercup surprisingly didn’t try to convince me to go.

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When he called me back last night, I was already half drunk, decked out in tiger stripes and no coat, making my way up to a party with Jasmine. When he asked about the call that he’d missed, I told him that I’d been walking alone and that it was dark and scary and there were creepy men about. I neglected to mention that I’d made the walk to and from Buttercup’s a hundred times alone in the dark and it was no longer half scary.

“I’m glad you thought of me,” he said.

I’m just glad he doesn’t know I think of him almost every moment of every day.