I will not sugarcoat anything: today was shit. Not for any singular reason but rather because everything piled up and became difficult to handle and at the end of it I am here, exhausted. I cried today, but only for a minute because mostly I am too self-conscious to do it and I feel silly and selfish. Anyhow here are some things that have been breaking my heart.
1 // German UAS
I will be honest and say that this was difficult and admit that it was my fault. When German class starts at 7 every Tuesday it's not likely a lazybum like me will come to class. I continually overslept and missed that class and since the textbook itself was entirely in German (how am I supposed to learn German with a fully-German textbook? I'm no German schoolkid, I'm a GTL [German Third Language] student) I was essentially lost in an abyss of kartoffeln. Not literally. But I felt that way.
2 // Closure
There was someone that was causing a lot of trouble in my life and sending me very mixed messages. We will call him Charles. I will be bitter and say that Charles is selfish and irresponsible. I suppose I will also be honest and say that a part of me was in love with Charles, because he made time for me and listened to me and was very good at flirting and he had a good heart and he was very reliable. The thing is there were two sets of extenuating circumstances that made our friendship very difficult to maintain.
Anyhow I am a very stubborn person and was willing to fight to keep him in my life, despite the trouble he was causing me. He was not willing to do the same for me. It was a very messy situation because we have family ties (that is one of the set of extenuating circumstances) and drama ensued, he disappeared for a week, and I essentially had to beg for him to at least give me closure. Another fact: I am very good at "getting over" things as long as I am given that. He denied me that for a week and I floundered.
I got closure today. Granted, I did not want to hear the words he had for me, but I heard them, and generally I am doing better now. But because a part of me was in love with him and he chose safety over me and because he saw everything that happened as a big problem: my heart, today, is weeping.
The most painful part of this is that I have rationalized his behavior and I understand it. He was honest and I respect that very, very much. I just do not want the story to end this way.
3 // Rewriting Chapter 1
As some of you may know I am working on a novel. Recently I lost my USB drive which means I have to rewrite everything, almost from scratch. Additionally the plotline and the fictional world my story is set in both had to be restructured.
I have a bad habit of editing while I write and I wrote and then edited Chapter 1 again and again and again, yesterday and today. The scenes I wrote were very painful and dramatic and angry and I think this was all very draining and I am now mostly finished with the first chapter of the novel but my heart is sick now.
4 // Forgiveness
This is tightly linked and cannot be extricated from the second item on this list. I firmly believe that had someone not opened their mouth about my burgeoning friendship with Charles the second item on this list would be nonexistent. I know Moz will insist that regardless of whether or not someone interceded I should have stopped talking to Charles long before today but I digress. Let's call this interceder Maria. Anyways I think that Maria played an undeniable role in causing drama for and between Charles and I. Perhaps it was because she did not want me to lose face or she did not want, by being associated to me, to lose face. But she still played a role and with her faulty and hasty assumptions turned what was already a difficult battle into an impossible one.
I know I am supposed to have a big heart but I cannot, right now. To you, Maria, this is what I will say:
You knew nothing about the relationship between Charles and I and only chose to believe that I was bothering him or being a nuisance. You did not spend any moment looking for conclusive evidence and instead told stories to your mother about Charles and I. You were a third person, and we did not include you. I choose to believe that he made time for me in his life because he wanted me there and not because he felt pity for me and next time I hope that you will remain outside of problems that do not directly involve you. Perhaps you are the one who told him to stop talking to me. I resent you for it. You are a busybody. I did not invite you into the problem and neither did he.
I must forgive both Charles and Maria and it is hurting me to do so but I know I have to let it go quickly. First I must forgive Charles because he is not brave and because he prefers safety to adventure and because he did not choose me, and then I must forgive Maria for either hastening or inducing our demise. I did not want it to end. He spoke to me sweetly, with great care, and I am presently very bitter because maybe if circumstances had been different he and I would not be here across a divide which I must eventually accept and walk away from.
5 // The First Anniversary
I have thought a lot about that this month. About 31 December 2014. About those pills. I can still recite them: how many of each brand. And I don't know how to feel about it. Occasionally I will catch myself thinking about how I am in the negative, as in: on 31 December 2015 I will be -365 days alive.
I am trying to be optimistic but I cannot shake the feeling that I am often not happy. Everyone who hears this will tell me that I am pessimistic and that I need to be grateful for what I have and then that gets me in a loop:
- feel unhappy
- feel guilty for being ungrateful
- regret living
I really loathe it, you know. Being called ungrateful. Being told that I need to be content with what I have. I am selfish and I want more. Am I an evil person because I desire freedom?
* // Epilogue
This week will end soon. On Saturday I am reading for Rain's book launch and I will wear something pretty. When this week ends my winter holidays will begin and I will not have classes again until February 23rd. That is something to rejoice over. I have overdependency on my friends but I am thankful for Rain and for Moz and Madina and Anisa and the others because I will get through this week as I have every other. And I am still relieved because my life is still full of wondrous happiness and destructive pain, and it is a testament that I am still (still!) gloriously alive.