You know what? You never know.

I wrote this for Mischievous Sweethearts, but I've been thinking about it a few days now.

I'm writing this while drunk on shame wine and soapy radio. I don't even know if soapy is a word, but I don't remember the right one. Anyhow. I've been told a week and so ago that being alone for so long is just not natural. Fine, that liking being alone so much isn't natural. And it's been obsessing me ever since. So now I'm clearing it up.
I'm fine. Really. I love watching movies on my own. I love going to the theater all alone. I love my time with the cat at home, reading, cooking and baking mischief. I love my job, my education and my family. Chill. I won't die without a man by my side. I love them men. They make amazing friends, lovers and puzzles. But they're not obligatory. There's not that much room in my bed. All I need is great conversation and pretty sporadic sex.
The thing is. I've been promising myself the next penis I offer more than action time to will be owned by a man I can see as an equal and a partner. But at the same time, I'm not willing to give up on the exciting times that come with meeting extraordinarily talented boys. I believe in them saving the world one word, song or play at the time. And maybe they need a push (or more, if you know what I mean) and I'm the girl for the job. Or not. I'm  making a retarded groupie joke. What I mean is I won't give up on the prospective fascinating passion stories, be them romantic or gothic.
But I won't be looking for them. I don't even know why I need to explain this, but have you ever imagined what the men in my books and movies can do? What the men in my songs tell me? Are they any different from the ephemeral love real men can offer me? I can buy my own wine and create my own handmade orgasms, thankyouverymuch. What I want to see is extra quality. I need dream makers and dream catchers. I need shameless impossible to keep pace with men. I want breathlessness and piercing brains. I must have mindblowind indescribable pleasure. Why would I settle? It's not like it's gonna get any better otherwise. I require euphoria!

When nobody's watching

Here's my latest post on Mischievous Sweethearts. I hope we can revive our soulsearching loveable blog again, because I miss musing around there with my friend. Also, I'm thinking we can have a guest post from the babe.

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about the fact that I haven't been concerned with my spiritual self for a couple of years now. Yes, I've been praying for these past few months, but my prayers are actually therapy. I count my blessings and wish really hard for the people in my life to stay healthy and happy and maybe sometimes I want a thing or two for myself as well. But it's more like a list to Santa, a hint to the universe as to what I want from life. However, I have not been concerned with findind that quiet place inside anymore. That one moment that lasts forever when I'm nothing and everything at the same time. That pursuit has been a great part of my life and my dreams for as far as I can remember. And I've lost it, I let it go, somehow I wondered in a darker place. I remember saying I'm angry all the time for no reason, I remember people telling me I've become so self-centered... when I was actually anything but centered.

The truth is I've been playing so many parts I've lost count and sometimes I get them wrong, and sometimes the masks overlap and it's a mess. I've worked so hard to be a good student and a good daughter and a good girlfriend, I never had time to actually be good AT something... and to actually be a good person. I feel like I wasn't good at my job or studies, I rarely genuinely wanted to do something for the sake of it. I was just so great at playing those parts because I needed the validation. Psichology says we have two main types of motivation: extrinsic and intrinsic. And the latter comes from the inside and in the long run gives us a higher level of satisfaction. Well, most of my motivation was extrinsic. It doesn't mean I didn't enjoy stuff. It means I did it for the sake of others and the rewards that come with it. I played the parts that were expected of me. And when I got tired of it I got wasted until I didn't know who I was anymore. I sometimes envy actors. Off stage, when they take off the make up, they must be so tired of being somebody else, of having their whole bodies live another life for an hour or two, that they can actually be their true selves. But then again, plumbers fix their own pipes as well and chefs cook their own dinners sometimes.
The thing is... I don't need to find who I am, it's not about that anymore. I need to start living more AS myself. I sometimes wonder how people can still stay innocent or passionate or dreamy at 30 and I think it's because they can separate themselves from all the crazy exterior numbing crap. I do that too, but out of habit, I sing in the street and I dance around the house and I dream on the bus. But once I can consciously truly go back there, to my place inside of genuine peace and joy, to restore my faith and see the world as a river, well, only then I'll be able to be every single day the person I am when nobody's watching.

Martisor

There is a custom in the Balkan area according to which every beginning of spring we wear a lace made out of entwining white and red thread. Some wear it on their wrists, like I noticed with my Bulgarian friends and some wear it together with a small decorative object (used to be a small coin or even a button, now the sky is the limit in terms of variety) on their coat’s lapel, as we do in Romania. Some wear it just for a few days and others until the weather gets better. In some areas people wear them until they see the first stork. In others, until they see a blossomed tree and when they take it off, they tie it around a branch.

Even if it became a commercial holiday, in which people just buy and gift these tiny decorative objects, Martisor is already a cultural reflex for Romanians. People make these gifts in order to show appreciation, but it’s such a wide spread practice that women who don’t receive any will wonder why. But as a ritual that marks the beginning of spring, Martisor is also associated with practices of cleansing, of welcoming the new season with a clean house and holiday clothing. In most areas men give Martisor to women and children to the elderly. But there are regions, such as the Eastern part of the country where girls make gifts to boys and they receive gifts on Women’s Day, on the 8^th of March.

Initially, the lace was white and black because black was not associated to death and suffering. In later customs, black had been replaced by red, as a symbol of youth, of beauty and vitality. Red is also associated to spring as a new beginning, so the Martisor is a symbol of the succession of the two seasons – one coming and the other one going. Back in the days, mothers used to make Martisor for their children. Later, women and young girls started wearing them as well, as ethnographers explain. Some women wore it as a necklace and men would decorate their hats with them. People even tied them to their doors and roofs so that the house is protected from evil spirits.

There are various superstitions about Martisor. Some say that wearing it protects children from disease and young girls are protected from the blinding rays of the spring sun. The two threads had to be entwined because this action kept the bad luck away. Another superstition is about the “old ladies”. Between the 1^st and 9^th of March people can pick a day and depending on the weather that day, you can predict how your whole year will be.

This superstition comes from a story that has some historical roots. It says that Dochia, the sister of Decebal (the king of the united tribes that lived on the Romanian territory before the Roman invasion) was courted by a Roman soldier and she didn’t want to marry him. When her brother committed suicide (rather than see his country in the hands of the enemy) she ran away to the mountains. It was the beginning of spring and the weather was very unstable. She tried to disguise herself as a shepherdess and she had lots of sheep skin coats on to keep her warm. But as she was moving upwards on the mountain with her sheep, the weather kept changing and she would take the coats off one by one. At some point, when she was left with barely any clothes on, it suddenly got very cold and she froze. She remained knows as “the old lady Dochia”, although the legend says she was young and beautiful. The first days of spring are named after this legend, to emphasize the instability of the weather during that week.
I was planning for a while now to write a little post about these Eastern European customs, especially because I know we have a few foreign readers and maybe they would enjoy an insight into our cultural practices. As for my fellow citizens, please feel free to complete or correct my accounts. And may all of you have a happy fulfilling spring!

Why this year I love Valentine’s Day

A couple of nights ago one of my friends told me she hated Valentine’s Day because it’s a foreign holiday and it has nothing to do with our national traditions. Also, she said she will only celebrate our own holiday, called Dragobete. This is celebrated usually on the 24th of February and is an equivalent to tomorrow’s American holiday. Boys and girls used to pick the first flowers of spring and then sit around fires on top of the nearby hills. At lunch time, the girls would run away and the boys who liked them would try to catch them. If the girl also likes the boy, she can kiss him in front of everybody, this sometimes meaning they are engaged for an year or even longer. Unmarried girls would gather the last snow and use the water for beauty rituals and other spells throughout the year and the older people would avoid killing any animals this day so as not to spoil their mating season. The girls who would not meet any boy this day was “cursed” not to be loved by anyone that whole year. It’s a lovely holiday and I adore all the symbolism it implies. I will celebrate it as well, even if maybe only for the rituals. But I don’t feel that this tradition is any closer to my heart than the other one, since in my family’s village nobody knows much about it and they have never celebrated it. I remember many magical holidays and rituals my grandmother would perform, she even had her own spells and ways of understanding nature and reading a calendar. But none of those she taught me about was a celebration of love.
I’ve usually been single on Valentine’s Day, I had this really interesting habit of breaking up with people just before. At least I saved them some expenses. But I always spent it by myself, daydreaming and eating chocolate. I felt free and full of hope, like the whole world is laid down at my feet and I considered it to be a day I cherished all the love I had received and all the love I was going to enjoy. So I never felt lonely or sad on Valentine’s Day. Just pissed, because I used to condemn the commercial feel the whole holiday was infected by. But now I know they would always find something to sell and a reason for people to buy it. So why not enjoy the new decorations kicking out the snow flakes, why not welcome all the warm colors that invite spring in? I’m really happy when I see a lot of people carrying flowers and being more attentive and tender than usual, even in public places. When people say they can love each other all year, I couldn’t agree more. But they should be encouraged to publicly love each other just a few days a year. So I pardon public displays of affection on love related holidays. It beats the hell out of winter’s ass and it brings a feel of hope all over.
So this year I’ll be having a pretty uneventful Valentine’s as well. But I’ll be happy for every couple I see on the street, I’ll buy myself flowers and treat myself to a nice evening of music and maybe wine. Because this year I have something special to celebrate. For the first time in a really long time I feel there are some great people out there and that maybe I’m ready to give it a shot. I caught myself thinking one night that good things don’t happen to me. And just switching that mindset has made me realize I want those nice things and I think I’m finally able to enjoy them. So this year I believe and that’s a wonderful reason to celebrate. Chances are the road is long, but I enjoy walking and I have to thank my dirty Cupid for pushing me forward. Just the thrill of giving it a try was enough to get me to ask myself the right questions.
Valentine’s Day is not just a holiday the corporations use to creep into our lives. It’s a good reminder to invest a little more in our romantic lives, a boost to define where we are in this respect and whether we want to sit on the side or dive heads in. After all that time when the more Valentine’s approached, the better I knew I wanted out, I’m in a great place now and I finally believe it can only get better from here. So you people enjoy being in love every day and know that tomorrow I will not be engrossed by any of you groping and slurping on each other’s faces on the street or the bus. Happy spring holidays!

On Valentine's Eve

Initiation rites

Coming home from an African art exhibition today I got to thinking about rites of passage and how they play the role of landmarks and boundaries in people’s lives. And I realized they’ve been blurred and transformed so much we don’t know when we’re past a milestone anymore. Where is that ceremony for entering adulthood? How do we know that society welcomes us as full contributing members? And are there different rites for different aspects of our lives?

Of course, the most classical ones remain the coming of age parties. Some have a sweet sixteen, we have a big eighteen party, other cultures have full-fledged rituals of initiation that include separation from the family and learning what adulthood is all about. But in our society, are we really made privy to grown-up life? Not really. It’s a great thing that we are encouraged to figure it out on our own and build our own definitions of being an adult. Crossing to the other side might happen when we leave our parents’ house, or when we get a family of our own, or when we get a job or finish school. Or whatever we choose to see as a landmark. Finishing school, by the way, is a pretty common one. As I wrote a while back, it’s when former generations expected they would find employment, move into their own homes and start a family. But people now are marrying older, are traveling a lot or studying for a longer period of time. So it doesn’t really apply to as many people anymore. Although, if I may make a short comment, even this view is a bit too centered on our own cultural experience. In some cultures marriage comes first, at a very early age and it’s a rite of passage to adulthood as well. In others it’s strictly a question of coming of age and all the rest can follow only after being introduced to society as an adult.

But what about love life rites of passage? I amused myself trying to figure out when did I actually start dating. Because if it was when I had my first “boyfriend”, it means I’ve been doing it for a really long time. When I was in 5^th grade a classmate sent me a piece of paper asking if I wanted to be his girlfriend. I wrote back yes and a while later he sent me a Valentine card and we went for a walk around the block. And that was it, we didn’t even hold hands. Could it have started when I had my first kiss? Or my first “I love you”? Or my first date? That would be weird, because I had a couple of committed long term relationships before I even went on a real first date. So when did it start? And moreover, is it going to end? Not making a big deal out of serious dating anymore, as we are no longer pressured by time or society to marry in our 20s, we’ve grown to treat it so shallow. We “try on” people, see if they fit. We actually run from commitment because we are scared of ending up with the next best thing. It’s a great thing that we are allowed to choose and experience, but the question is if we see the larger picture and whether we actually choose to enjoy all the opportunities that cross our path or we just ended up in a vicious circle of bad choices, when all we wanted was somebody to cross the borders with.

I’m not saying I want to live in a rigid society. It’s just that some sense of tradition would be nice and I’d like it if there were some rules and boundaries I can then choose to rebel against. I know that they haven’t disappeared completely and that we still have unwritten rules we live our lives by. But now the limits are so much wider this freedom feels overwhelming sometimes. Or it’s maybe just me, after all I am just a conformist little girl…

Soul mates

When it comes to looking for the love of their lives, many people say they are searching for a better half or soul mate. But I’ve grown to believe that the latter has little to do with the rest. Our soul mate could also be a parent or a friend or a child, a sibling, even a pet. We don’t necessarily have to be in love with our soul mate and there’s little chance if we are now that we would be forever, although it might help. It’s not very likely that we could be in love with a person forever, but that’s another story for another post. However, a soul mate is forever. No matter how much we love or hate them, these are the people we cannot shake off. Ever. A thought that is both comforting and terrifying.

I have days I hate my soul mate’s guts. And days I keep telling him how much I love him. It’s a weird kind of love and hate. Some soul mates are joined by common interests or blood ties, some are just so good together they can’t breathe in each other’s absence. We are more like astral twins. Somehow we're so much alike it’s annoying, because we can smell each other’s bullshit. But we’ve developed in different environments and maybe we play different games. I slip through the fingers and hide. He goes out there and drowns his bad days in the crowds. We both feel alone sometimes and we’re in a strange way together through all that. Inexplicably, we share moods or we’re on the extreme opposites, but never on asymmetrical positions. I guess we still resent each other for all the chances we didn’t take, for letting our love story fail and for giving other people what we owed each other. And we still believe in the back of our heads that whenever other options fail, we’ve still got each other. If I’d have to pick a literary reference where I can see a resemblance, it would be Mircea Cartarescu’s (Romanian postmodernist poet and novelist) “Gemenii”. However much things have changed, I believe we have an absurd symbiosis, we don’t “match”, we “melt”. It might sound strange, but sometimes it feels like we inhabit each other. Funny thing is we still can’t have a decent conversation without dancing our stupid cha-cha. Two steps forth, three steps back. I’m the one with the steps back. I guess I still can’t lose my grip. So acknowledging the big place he still has in my heart is a first step.

However, I still want to underline there is no point in assuming a soul mate would make a good partner. At least in my case, sometimes I think we’ve hurt each other so much, there is no more room for trust or any sort of joint plans. But mostly, I really believe people find great soul mates in their friends, because they are there through so much more than lovers. Bros before hoes, right? Friends make great soul mates because we pick them, they are the family we choose and in time they are some of the best investments we can make.

I may be pushing an agenda here, but seriously, you don’t need to be sexually attracted to somebody to share the deepest spiritual and intellectual connection. It’s actually a pretty shallow criterion. And whatever cultural stereotypes we’ve been fed by the romantic literature and movie industry, we have to let go of. Because they just create absurd expectations. Lovers don’t have to be our perfect matches and soul mates don’t have to be the love of our lives. They can be annoying sweethearts we can’t ever let go of because some day, under the same stellar conjunction, we were born twins from different mothers.

Finding magic

I might have mentioned earlier how I see magic as the ways in which we channel our will to bring about change in the surrounding world. And I’ve been wondering lately whether we can use it to bring love into our lives. That one big true magical love everyone is talking about. I recently read a lovely article on finding and using magic in our everyday lives and I now believe it is not about grabbing that love by the balls, but about inviting it in and not drawing deadlines, about making room for it and being able to fully embrace it when it comes along.

We might not realize it, but we all are magical beings. We perform rituals every day, we use spells and potions to get closer to the objects of our desires. We just don’t do it consciously. Living a magical life is about living consciously. That thing others call living in the now. But as magical creatures we don’t have to let go of all of our desires, but to acknowledge they are all means to greater ends. That what we actually seek are not the material things, but rather abstract concept that make us happy. When we want clothes or perfumes we actually seek beauty and appreciation. When we want cars and money we want status and the thrill of open possibilities. When we want somebody we want company or love or support etc. And when we seek these things we perform rituals that are either of our own making or behaviors we have been socialized into. Every time me take a bath we perform a beauty ritual, or a cleansing one, or a social acceptance rite if that’s our only motivation. When we go to work we perform a daily ritual of ensuring security and prosperity. And so on and so forth. The trick is to actually acknowledge the real reasons behind what we do. They actually reveal our true values. Lying is not about not having principles, for example, it’s about seeking acceptance or even peace of mind. "No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks", Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley once wrote.

Once we are conscious of the higher motivations behind our desires and actions, we can transform them into more efficient rituals. It doesn’t take a witch to cure our deepest wounds or give us the highest high (although sometimes we do meet one in disguise who turns our lives around). We can use our own rites to make each day more meaningful, to enhance the magic in simple moments. Turning our beauty endeavors into self-love rituals, each meal into thoughts of gratitude towards all the Earth’s miracles that have landed on our plate, every reading into a trip to foreign lands and a chance to make new friends. Because once we start seeing the small things in a magical way, we’ll unconsciously add quality to our lives. We’ll want the fresh and tasty veggies and we won’t let others tell us what beauty means. We’ll be able to enjoy a good conversation and move on from people who only spread bad energies, or maybe we’ll make their day and that great feeling will come back to us threefold.

The great things we want for ourselves will be easier to see. I used to think I was spoiled by fate because I usually got what I wanted in life. The big things. Like a good education and finding a job, or like getting a guy. But the truth is I wanted some of these things so much I could see them. And visualization is one of the best ways to attract the things we want. The first step is enjoying what we have and through that realizing what we want. The second one is getting the best of that. And things don’t just come because we want them, sometimes is takes a lot of hard work. But keeping in mind the real reasons we do that work usually helps a lot. Talking about it, thinking of the best ways to get it and being patient helps a lot. Not putting deadlines or time frames on things keeps fear of failure and desperation on the side. Being able to wish for something but not feel pressured is what makes the difference between “things” and motivations.

So when we seek love we must understand it doesn’t just grow on trees. If we want it for the right reasons, if we really want love and not just company, not just social acceptance, not just a cure for loneliness, then we get one step closer to it. And we might meet love, but can we tell? Do we know anymore what it feels like, after being stomped over time and time again? We can, once we regain our innocence. Once we understand all those reasons for trusting others and even for allowing ourselves to get hurt. Once we let it all go as lesser attempts to get what we want and we believe that every time we give it a try we get better at it. And once we find it, we finally get a partner in magic. Now all the rituals will be in two. Rituals of spiritual nurturing, rituals of pleasure, rituals of security.

Humans are magical creatures because they can use their will to make the world a better place for themselves and others and they can do it consciously. I didn’t want to sound like a guru, but spending time in top of snowy mountains has really given me fuel for thought and magic is my new favorite word.

Single and fabulous

Once I used to believe I was addicted to love. A lovaholic. A relationship person, somebody who could not function well without being attached from the hip to somebody else. I’ve been in serial relationships most of my dating life and all that time I was never single for more than three months. And now it’s been more than two years. And I’m just now starting to realize why it is so. It’s not because all guys are jerks and there’s nobody out there or I just haven’t met him. And it’s not because there’s something wrong with me or I’m not ready to go back to being in a relationship. The one great reason I’m still single is because I chose so.

Whenever my grandmother asks me if I have a boyfriend or a concerned auntie wants to know when I’m getting married I keep wondering why is it that people expect us to pair up all the time. Is being single like being homeless or unemployed? Is there still such a great social stigma associated to it? We all know that some decades ago for a woman it was more tragic to be single than unemployed. Actually, it was the possibility to work outside the home and support ourselves, own property and decide upon our own bodies that created this ever growing pool of singles nowadays. And so we should ask ourselves, are more and more people single because there are less options on the dating market or just because they can and choose to do so? I would rather agree with the latter. You see, we can now choose to spend our lives experiencing multiple relationships or none at all, instead of being in an oppressive marriage we never wanted in the first place. We can choose to get out of a dysfunctional relationship instead of enduring it all just for the sake of not being labeled with the oh so scary sticker of old maid.

I enjoy being single for both the perks of said independence and for being able to avoid the pitfalls of relationships. The independence doesn’t just mean “you can do what you want”. You can actually do as you please in a healthy relationship as well, because I trust in a good partnership you will want the things that are right for you and your partner. It’s more about escaping that constant scrutiny. You’ve read about it a thousand times in women’s magazines, it’s awesome to be single because you can wear granny panties and you don’t always have to look great and smell nice, nobody will notice that extra couple of kilos on your hips after the holidays and your hair doesn’t always have to be shiny. Yes, they say they love you just the way you are. But we notice stuff. We notice the cavity in that tooth and the dirty fingernail and the pimple on the nose. And we know men notice far more things and expect far more effort to be put into our looks. Yes, we all love to be pretty every time we go out the door, but sometimes, at home, we just want to sit around in our pajamas with our hair stuck to our head, eating cheesy puffs and watching bad TV. And you can do that when you’re in a relationship too. But not whenever you please. These are just examples, but the bottom line here is that the constant scrutiny of a partner we want to spend every breathing minute with is quite heavy on our shoulders. And singles have it easy that way.

And then, we don’t get to worry about all those things people who are dating do. Like what he’s thinking of every second, is he having doubts about us, is he checking out that girl, is he cheating on me, is he really over his last girlfriend, why did they break up anyway, is there something wrong with him I haven’t noticed yet, where is this going and why won’t he talk about it, are his parents going to like me, is my father going to break his legs, how many children are we going to have, should we move in together, will we ever earn enough to buy a house and build a family… That kind of stuff. We don’t think about it all at once. But over one year, most of these questions are bound to pop out in our heads. And some of the things we worry about might happen on the way, bringing about a lot of pain and a need to reconsider our whole existence.

My biggest concerns as a single person are what to have for lunch and whether to build a career in this or that direction. I sometimes think I would have no time for a relationship, between my work and education, my family and my friends I hardly get to read and the pile of books and magazines waiting for me is getting larger by the day. But the thing is I don’t feel the need to or want one. I believe this is an awesome time to enjoy myself and know all the things that make me happy. To push myself and see where I draw the lines and to grow in whichever direction I want without having to adapt my future plans to future plans I’ve made in my head with somebody else. I don’t look at it as time between relationships when I get to become a better person for somebody to love me more when I finally meet him. It’s a transition time between school years and junior level jobs and the days when I’ll actually be working at securing a bright future for myself. Maybe I’ll meet someone, maybe I won’t, maybe I’ll have children, maybe I won’t. What I can tell you right now is that I feel fabulous about being single and I can’t even put in words all the great things about it. And for anybody to change that, they’d have to be at least as pretty damn awesome as I am.

Karma and its army of demons

Some girl in a movies said that faith is for the weak, an excuse not to go grab whatever we want then and there. In that line of thought, I believe a lot of concepts like that actually help us deal with reality, give us a sense of order in a universe that is so much beyond our understanding that we need to oversimplify it. But what if there is certain equilibrium? A law of compensation that keeps things straight. A strange way of this cold impersonal universe of taking care of us. Karma is a rather comforting concept in a way. It gives us the peace of mind to leave pain behind knowing that we would be avenged. It helps us get off the door in the morning, knowing that whatever keeps the balance out there will make all things right in the end. But when it comes to relationships, I’ve noticed karma is a pretty scary word.

When they are in love, people want to be loved for who they are and not just because they love the other. So nobody gives it too much thought. But when things get ugly, some of us have that fear in the back of their heads that however they hurt their partner, it’s coming to bite them in the ass. That’s why we persevere in our mistakes in a way. Fear has never been a good partner.I saw this card on Post Secret which said “my wife left me because I wouldn’t admit I cheated on her. I never did”. 

This kind of makes me think about two things I observed quite often and wrote about before. One is that when we start lying, it’s always about little things, so as not to make our partners worried or angry. We start with the most basic thing, saying we’re fine when we’re actually not (well, men know that when women say everything’s all right, there must be something fishy). Then we get to things like “going out with the girls/guys for coffee”, when you’re actually going dancing and drinking till morning. And we end up lying about working late when in fact we’re with somebody else. One of the worst case scenarios. Thing is a lie will always lead to another and no matter how many white lies we tell, eventually we’ll lie about something big. I see people after decades of marriage who resent each other in one way or another and they never say it. The other thing the card reminded me was that we mirror our behavior in our partner. Yes, there are genuinely jealous people. But some of the most violently jealous people I know are those who cheat. You lie and cheat so you expect your partner to lie and cheat. And sometimes being labeled the bad guy actually turns you into the bad guy. Instant karma. We don’t really need a force of the universe to bite us in the ass. We do a great job ourselves. Hurting other people will eventually hurt us. Because we’ll live in fear. Because we’ll lose trust. Because the weight of lying will be so heavy on our shoulders, we’re bound to drop it.

And what happens when we hurt bystanders? People involved in our relationships in a way or another, who suffer by association. Do we really have to think about each and single one of the people our relationship felonies affect? We make and lose friends, we get close or become strangers to families, we step on some toes whenever we are with somebody. Every relationship at the time, I believe. Somebody is bound to be unhappy with our choices, every time. We’ll win some and lose some and sometimes we’ll get away with it.

Ah, getting away with it! Nothing as scary as that. Can being a bitch in one relationship pay up in the next one? Does cheating now make you bound to be cheated on later? Somehow I’m sure it’s not how it works. The problem is that when we expect these things to happen, it’s like inviting them in. When we believe we are sinners and deserve the wrath of whatever is out there, we end up punishing ourselves. When we see ourselves as monsters, we are the ones that take a little bit of our beauty away each day. It’s maybe karma, it’s maybe conscience, it’s maybe fear.

I am actually a strong believer in the Wiccan Law of Threefold Return. The one that says that whatever benevolent or malevolent actions a person performs will return to that person with triple force, or with equal force on each of the three levels of body, mind and spirit. I also believe this whole belief system to be based on the power we all have to channel our will to transform what others call faith. So for now let’s just look at karma as a motivation we give selfish people to be altruistic and build our own laws of return. What is certain is that love and positive thoughts will always give good returns. Treasuring others' affection and trust can’t hurt and living as a free open fearless person beats the dark shadows of karma any day.

Eastern Europeans don't speak romance

After having my mind blown by Bertolucci’s “Last tango in Paris”, my first thoughts went to my amazing Western lovers and to how movie-like our relationships have been. It sounds a bit farfetched to make generalizations based on such few cases. But maybe I can extend my sample by also considering my most favorite men, who are directors or writers or just some of their characters.

I’ve always found Eastern Europeans to be a bit on the dark side. They have this obscurity that somehow makes you feel like you could never penetrate to a level where they would lose the grip. There is something about them that is never satisfied. Like they could always get better, but they’re not even bothering to look. I do believe that all of this brings along a lot of frustration. Of the Eastern Europeans I got to know better in time, I find Serbians to be the most shady. I think they pair a nice imagination with some serious case of always feeling wronged. Hungarians are still a mystery to me, they do have a potential for romanticism, but maybe they’re too well programmed to roam free. Bulgarians are nice guys, but you can never be sure they’re not being sarcastic. I don’t think it’s a national trait, but maybe a case of Romanians being lost in translation. The latter speak a really weird kind of romance. Because they’ve always experienced it second-hand. That kind of traditional courtship inherited through the ages is almost gone. The one where you would dance with the girl on Sunday and then try to get her alone when she’s out working or whistling over her fence and then eventually stealing her in order to oblige her parents to give you their blessings. Romanians have borrowed bits and pieces from Italian or French and now American fashions of the times and forgot how to pursue women in their own way. The most obvious example is the toxic bachelor syndrome, where men figured after a certain age there is a flip in power and now they can sleep around and convince women it's all right for them to do so because they call it open relationships and everybody does them nowadays. However, I believe women much rather adopted platform high heels than fancy-named polygamy.

What I’ve always loved about the French, for example, is that openness to however sophisticated or absurd approaches to courtship. That ability to see women as means and not ends, to not think about whether tomorrow they may still belong to them. And that gives them a freedom that Easterners’ fear or ridicule would never allow them to experience. The freedom not to think twice before they speak and not to have to hide behind words. And the ability to be there and not somewhere else when they’re with a woman and treat her like she’s the only one left on Earth. When I talk about darkness I don’t refer to mystery. I refer to being impermeable to intimacy and in that sense the more you go East, the thicker the barrier gets.

Latinos are not big on intimacy either, but that fire that everyone talks about, it’s there all right. These guys know what they want and they take it. And they hold on to it. Not by always fearing it’s going away and bitching about it, like Eastern Europeans do. But by being a bit overly possessive and mostly by being insatiable lovers. They are maybe not the most fancy guys you can find, but I believe they know how to enjoy the really good stuff. The sun, the sand, the food, the wine and especially the women. Uncomplicated lovers, I believe they make it to our hearts easily because of that warmth they effuse. But what I like the most about them is that they can really fight. Not just stand there and look angry, not just offend you and walk away. They argue the way they love, spending a lot of energy and burning all of the tension then and there.

It’s a pretty sensible subject and I’m sure anyone could disagree with my experience. It’s always been a bit wrong to put people of a certain nationality in the same box based on traits we consider to be inherent to their ethnicity. But I believe some of the cultural heritage does express itself in our everyday lives, and why not in our relationships.

Toxic crushes

This morning a friend of mine posted a song I couldn’t get out of my head. I’ve attached it below. Looking at the comments it got, I realized there’s lots of us out there. People who have their very own Jessie. That one person we cannot say no to, even though they don’t treat us well, are not good for us and when we think we’re off the hook, they just show up out of the blue or mesmerize us from the other end of the line.

One day I thought to myself I’m really over it, but while writing this post I realized I still get the chills and my knees would still melt if I saw him on the street. He could sell me any bullshit any day and maybe I wouldn’t even realize it. But how did I get here? The easiest way is to want it really bad for a very long time and never see it happening until it does. And then being denied the whole thing. Getting just bits and pieces and being driven crazy. However, I believe the mind games were not as effective as the incredible attraction. Because I knew all along he wasn’t good enough for me, but I could’ve spent days and days just looking at him. And doing other stuff. And every time he showed up, he would sweep me away. And every time he’d call, I’d drop the pajamas and walk out the door at 3 a.m. Nothing is as toxic as a desire we manufacture ourselves. It’s like drinking our brains out and waking up the next day feeling intoxicated. When we went out we were all like “yaaay! I’m getting smashed tonight”, but the next day it’s “what on Earth was I thinking?”. It’s the same with these irresistible crushes. We say to ourselves, “what’s a fun night gonna hurt?” but a few days later we do stare at the phone and think of how the best way to a man’s heart is through his stomach (stab in and thrust up).

Some people are lucky. They get over it pretty easy. It usually takes a few years. You rarely get to be with your toxic crush, or have a healthy relationship with them at least. So you’ll always have the “the one that got away” syndrome. The big difference being these people are bad for you. They either use you and abuse you or just ignore you, it’s no way you can get out of this without a bruise here and a scratch there. One of my friends had this crush on a guy she usually met at parties. They made out in the broom closet and so on, but she never asked for more, figuring the guy was such a free-spirited person. Even when she was in relationships, he would still hit on her and most times convince her to hook up at least for the night. Eventually he got a plain girlfriend and will be married soon. Someone’s Jessie may be someone else’s Prince Charming. My friend still wonders why she couldn’t be the one. Other people I know just got tired of waiting. Or got tired of being used. They had the balls to call it quits, no matter how badly they wanted to let go and no matter how strongly the other one insisted.

I noticed a few of the comments said “I’m married to/ going to marry my Jessie”. I find that really hard to believe. Someone who doesn’t like and respect you enough to give you more than a few dreams is rarely going to change and decide he’s suddenly ready to settle down and you’re the one he wants to do it with. I could never trust a person who stringed me along for years and I wouldn’t commit to someone who used to tell me he has nothing to offer me (but maybe to someone else he did?). We buy any dream they sell, but somehow we also know it’s a game and we’re willing to play it. We like to play along this make-believe that we could be the one who’s worthy of it all. When in fact we don’t deserve any of this. And choosing to do it to ourselves is utter stupidity. We don’t deserve the booty calls and the last-minute hook-ups, the feeling we’ve made ourselves optional and disposable and going along with it just so that we can lie to ourselves a little bit more.
So seriously, the Rolling Stones had this great chorus we may want to keep in mind, “you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you get what you need”. Things that are bad for us may look sooo attractive, but at the end of the day we need to let them go. When we choose to be used and abused it’s our cross to bear, but allowing somebody to do us wrong thinking they’ll eventually grow to appreciate us is not an option. Because we deserve the best we can get and hanging on to a toxic crush is not it. 

Growing up? What's that?

One of these days I looked myself in the mirror and asked what did I want to be when I grow up? Where did I plan to be now in that scenario of my life I played out in my head as a child? And then I smiled and I thought “this is it”. I was raised to believe education is the best way for women to make it big. To reach for independence. To enjoy the simple little things in life. I wanted to be a detective and a writer and a student for ever and ever, and the way things work, I'm living the dream. I wanted a place of my own and a handful of friends I can hang with and count on. I’m here, but somehow there are plenty of people who still think I have a lot of growing up to do. As in get married and have babies. Make big bucks and move to a house in the suburbs. Buy a car and take the kids to piano lessons and soccer.

I see growing up as something different. I believe most of the roles people expect us to play have to be tried on. To see if they fit. That’s why we play all kinds on enactments of adult life as children. We try different jobs and we play house. We do the same as young adults. And some people decide it’s the real thing. But I believe in taking chances and knowing yourself. When people just assume the roles they were set out to play from early childhood, can we really call that growing up? Marrying your high school sweetheart fresh out of college and having a baby a couple of years after finding a stable job. Is that what growing up is all about? Because I’d rather call it settling. Not just settling down. Settling for what you were told your life should be like. Like microwaving a frozen diner instead of trying some amazing Thai cuisine. It’s true that most generations before us had a clear path before them and that saved them from experiencing a quarter-life crisis. But shouldn’t we consider ourselves lucky? With the amazing variety of options we now have, we can be the architects of our own lives.

My childhood best friend used to tell me she wants to graduate from college and get a job in a nice office and marry her one true love and have kids and live happily ever after. I guess this is it for her. I think she is soon to marry her first boyfriend, they’ve been together for the last seven years, if you don’t count the one when they first met in junior high. She got a job working for a multinational corporation and her parents must be really proud. Her life was a straight line towards her childhood dreams and I’m nobody to say that she is stuck or just settling. What I’m saying is that most of us don’t get to be like that.

Most people I know and hang around are actually extremely indecisive about their future even in their mid-20s. It might be that there is a common denominator that brought us together, while maybe people who couple early in life and marry at our age eventually  have friends that are more similar to them. What I wanted to say is that we are just as grown up as they are. And maybe more. Because we got to experience so many sides of life and we’ve been on our own and played house and tried all kinds of other wacky combinations. We traveled at least as much and met tons of people, we’ve questioned ourselves more and got to know ourselves better in the process. We didn’t take things for granted, be it religion or taste in men, and most times chose to think for ourselves instead of caving to the majority’s opinions and precepts. As far as relationships go, we’re the ones who won’t ask ourselves what would that have been like, because we went there and we already know. Being experienced and open-minded is what I consider to be grown-up. Because growing up should be more about growing than moving up towards a position set for us from birth. These indecisive people I know might marry and have children as well. But they will be the ones who make a grown-up decision to do so. The ones who can fully enjoy being mothers and wives/fathers and husbands as a personal decision they can celebrate, without looking back and thinking they could have taken a year off to back-pack around the world or given a chance to that cute person they used to know in college. So yes, I am all grown up now and I’m where I’m supposed to be. And I can go anywhere from here.

Freaks and monsters and what not

Now it’s common knowledge that there are different levels of knowing a person. Different depths, if you allow me. I always thought I may not seem much at the first glance, but when people get to know me they find I am quite something. But what I fear for as long as I can remember is that they might get to know me too well. Reach the dark depths where my freak lives. The little monsters in my head. That scary place you don’t just walk into. I’ve met people who introduced me to their own, one way or the other. Sometimes we even paired our freaks, gave them matching slippers and let them walk around while we were busy doing other things. But it is rarely that we can meet people we can accept entirely. Knowing the little monsters they can be. And there are maybe fewer people who can see and live with our own.

Most obvious type of freakiness we think of is in the sexual sense. When it comes to sex, it’s a mine field. Or a fence race. There are as may boundaries as people. Or even more. And the ones on the other side of the line are the freaks. Because people judge. Oh, they judge all right and their favorite thing to point a finger at is whatever is different from them. And in our sexual preferences we are all different. Now it maybe depends on how thick the line is. Some people say no, some people say maybe, others would never go there. We’ll probably hit a lot of those fences in our lives. Granted we draw the line farther than most of our sex partners. What I find funny is that the world is still full of people who hide in tiny little boxes. You know, the kind that do it with the lights off and just lay there. But some of the fences we’ll bring down and some we’ll just turn our backs to. When it’s worth it, even tanks can be in order. Some people will make us climb our own walls, take us further. And there will always be some people on the side labeling whoever is not on their side of the line. Screw them. Sex freaks are fun and at some point we’re lucky enough to find a freak or more that match our own. If we were all “normal”, we’d still be wearing night gowns with a hole around our genitalia. And say “Hail Mary” while waiting for it to be done with.

We are also freaks in the intellectual sense. People will always like weird stuff. They will listen to music that is too violent or too moronic for us to bear. They will watch movies we’d never be able to stay awake through and enjoy things we can’t understand. Lots of people we meet will not be able to have an argument without absurd statements or without a fight. Intellectually, it is very difficult to find a match. Tuning freakiness is a question of finesse when it comes to the brain. I’ve met so many attractive men who could make me laugh but when it came to conversation, they turned out not to be the brightest crayons in the box. Giving good conversation is maybe more important than giving good head. People are sometimes appalled by my tastes or preferences or social standings. And I am of those of others. We all meet freaks every day. But to some people we just feel like home.

The biggest freaks I’ve met so far were the emotionally handicapped. And I’m not only talking about commitment freaks. There are freaks at the other extreme as well. People who can hold on to someone with such violence they eventually drive them away. Those who threaten they’ll commit suicide if left astray. The ones that take you on guilt trips for every phone call you make or don’t take, for every person that looks at you funny on the street and so on. The crazy insecure possessive type. Of course the commitment challenged are more often met today. Probably because the other freaks already paired up. And this guys might never do. It should be easy by now to spot the difference. But it’s not, because our egos make us blind and stupid. I guess we somehow think we could be the ones to change that. To take a commitment freak and turn him into a white fence, barking dog, two kids kind of guy. But I’ve heard so many excuses I’m afraid to say I’ve heard them all. Most of us will never be that girl. The one who turns the available sign on. This is a form of emotional freak as well, this unavailable bachelor hunting. However, I believe whatever freak we run into, if we can’t fit it in our own crazy monster zoo, we’d better let it go. You can’t really change freaks, you can only pat their heads and kiss them goodnight.

Fairytale conditioning

Now I know I’m probably stating out things that most people already know, the feminist critical literature has been tackling this subject for years now. But after referring so often to the concept of Prince Charming, I really felt like a talk on fairy tales was in order. There are many ways in which we are socialized and even socially conditioned and I believe gender roles to be one of the strongest ways in which nurture builds characters.

In early childhood we are told stories that fascinate us, but also give us guidelines to who we should eventually become when we grow up. Apart from the gender-specific behavior we learn from our families, there is this powerful effect stories have upon us. They answer to our need to enjoy our imagination and also to our spirit of adventure. But the things we eventually end up learning may not be just human values and qualities like kindness, courage, determination, integrity and so on. We learn that as girls or boys we have separate places in the social world and that we don’t succeed in the same way.

Women in fairy tales are most often portrayed as helpless, damsels in distress waiting for their prince to come find them. They lack initiative and they lack any distinctive personality traits. The only thing that we know about most of them is that they are beautiful and that is their main worth. They are usually passive to events that come about in their lives and are only thrown into adventure by outside forces and with the help of supernatural creatures. Cinderella dreams of going to the ball, but it is only after the Fairy Godmother gives her a dress and a carriage that she can actually act upon her desires. Most main female characters in fairy tales are still stuck in the domestic realm. Snow White, even when she runs away to the dwarfs’ house, takes care of the cleaning and cooking and Cinderella does that all day long for her family. Even in some of the Romanian stories, where the main characters are girls and they are revered for being more that pretty faces, their smarts and kindness are put to the service of their families and they all do housework and care for others and that is the only thing they are rewarded for. Moreover, their devotion to men is religious. “The Poor Man’s Smart Daughter” eventually marries the town’s judge and when he gets upset with her and wants to throw her out, the one thing she chooses to take back with her (given the option to pick anything) is her husband. In stories where the main character is a prince who goes on a great adventure to rescue his kingdom or a princess, the women’s role is purely of décor. They sit around waiting to be saved from the evil grip of the monster and then indiscriminately marry the one that saves them. They are envied not for their personality, but for their beauty, which is what gets them in trouble and saves them at the same time. The evil forces want to kill or kidnap them just because of their looks, they pose no substantial threat as persons, but rather as a better and improved model of the female charms.

Talking about evil forces, the alternatives to the beautiful submissive soon-to-be-housewife in all fairy tales are women with supernatural powers. The good ones are Fairy Godmothers or kind old witches who give a helping hand. The others are evil witches or bad mothers. Any unmarried woman in stories has to be a witch. One of my anthropology teachers believes that witchcraft is strongly associated to women’s sexuality. So one way of explaining why some women chose to live outside of society’s clearly ascribed roles was witchcraft. The years of witch hunting were, in his opinion, just a measure to reinforce traditional gender roles.

So the templates for being a woman we get from fairy tales as little girls are nice and simple. You can either be a beautiful homebound princess, who is patient and kind and submissive and lives to meet her prince. Or you can be a witch who is forever alone and lives only to help or maim others.

The role models boys get from fairy tales are completely different. One annoying thing is that almost all male heroes are royalty or at least really rich. They are good looking and great fighters, fearless and intelligent. Men are part of the public sphere in all fairy tales. They roam around looking for adventure and saving damsels in distress. They don’t wait for things to happen, they go and take it. In a way, these are all attributes that are more difficult to live up to than those ascribed to women. And they create unrealistic expectations for the female readers about what a worthy suitor is supposed to be like. It is rarely that we find that knightly strength and courage in a man. They don’t fight monsters for us and don’t take us away to a castle on a white horse. We don’t instantly fall in love with the first one that rides into our lives and don’t live happily ever after with them. We rarely meet any male evil characters, though. In German fairy tales they are  barely existent and Romanian folklore has created this semi-human creature, similar to a basilisk, that kidnaps young princesses and is always defeated by Prince Charming. They are also secluded and, the way I see it, have all the psychological traits of a sociopath.

So boys and girls, we’ve all been taught by stories adults told us that there are two ways to go: comply with our gender roles, get married, have babies and live happily ever after, or stay bachelors and turn into monsters or slutty witches. Even though the world has changed so much, we still have these patterns of how we are supposed to be and live our lives buried conveniently in our subconscious.

If I ever get to have children, I want them to hear the real stories. About women who worked their way through school or even went to prison for their convictions who eventually got to run some of the largest or most powerful countries in the world. About real life princesses who raised money to feed the poor and give as many children as possible an education. About those who were laughed at and discredited, but kept fighting for our right to now be better educated and reach parity in economic power with men, for our right to choose whether to and what kind of family we want to dedicate ourselves to, for giving us the horse and the sword to be our own Prince Charming.

Walls people build

Some chick once said we don’t build walls to keep people away, but to see who are the ones brave enough to climb them. I believe it’s the other way around. The simple logic and basic functionality of fences and walls is their ability to separate. Man from the cold, garden from annoying neighbors, town from invaders. To keep away. Now, the only place where trespassing is portrayed as acceptable and even desirable are fairy tales. Like when Sleeping Beauty’s prince goes through all that trouble to get inside the castle to wake her up. Or when some Prince Charming fights the monster to save his princess. (I may have a thing for underdogs, but I sometimes cheered for the monster. Nobody asks them why they steal beautiful girls. Maybe they’re lonely, maybe the chicks dig their bad boy attitude. I see the symbolism, but in real life there are more than monsters and princes. Sometimes you even get both in the same package. But next time on fairy tales.)

The thing is, we need these walls. They are a natural protection against all evil. The more trauma, the more walls. Some people are so damaged, they have multiple-layered walls. Out of steel. Some have pretty walls and towers and all, in order to be inviting to passer-bys. But always being advised to tear them down is just stupid. In order to let people in, humans have invented these interesting things called doors. There is a name for climbing up the walls in order to get in, and that is invasion. You want in, stand there, in front of the door, let yourself be seen, knock and wait. Social protocol was designed for a reason, it’s supposed to make our interactions easier and decrease the risks of conflict. So the way I see it, walls should be cherished and boundaries respected. To those who have built them, they bring warmth and safety.

And when you are allowed in, there’s so much to discover that was not visible from outside. Sometimes we like what we find and we move in if invited. Sometimes we even make alliances and exchange keys. Sometimes we walk around for a while but get bored and on to another adventure. Sometimes we are terrified by what we see inside, run outside and never come back. We may come visit from time to time, we may be there just once. We are individuals, and individuality comes with boundaries. Getting to know somebody will always happen on their territory and the other way around. Being too invasive might make them feel threatened and show you out. Being stubborn about meeting them on neutral grounds will only allow you a short glimpse of what’s actually there.

So when you are invited in, take the chance. Even if only out of curiosity. And when you want in, do it the right way. Knock. Wait. And when the doors have shut behind you or might never open, let it go, move on, the adventure is probably elsewhere.

I’ve tried for years to bring my walls down and I’ve been pushed to do it so many times but now I believe those people were just lazy. Or had no understanding of what walls are made of and why. Stone after stone makes us who we are. From an early age we learn to see ourselves as distinct individuals. The songs we sang, the little pleasures and scars, the people who’ve stopped by to help us put on another stone, that’s how we build. We don’t just build to keep away. We build to stay inside. A place from where we can observe the world and try to make sense of it. Of course we go visit others as well, we travel, we explore. But we always need a place to call home. And I believe we like to have friends over. And lovers too. So trust me, people who want you over will keep the doors open for you. It happens sometimes that they’re taking a bath or singing (more like shouting) to the Rolling Stones in their pajamas and can’t hear the door bell ring. But check your pockets, you might have the key.

The one that got away

                    
                              Fantasy love is much better than reality love. Never doing it is very exciting. The most exciting attractions are between two opposites that never meet. (Andy Warhol)

Things we wanted badly and never got have an underlying power of growing in our minds up to where we see them as perfect. So do people, especially those who play a temporary role in our lives, but leave us with a sense of missing out on something bigger. At some point, we all have in the back of our heads the one that got away. That one person who would have been perfect for us, who none of those we actually had can compare to. The one that got away is our standard for perfection and our hallmark of nostalgia.

I met mine when I was still pretty young but not that innocent. I had known him before, when he caught my eye, but it was only a few months later that we actually met. He was supposed to entertain me for a few hours while I was transiting a new city. Maybe it was the sunset or the soon-to-be-summer weather, maybe it was just me and my soft spot for really smart guys, but it took a couple of minutes and I was hooked. Our sense of humor blended perfectly and we were amused by the most random things. We talked for hours and I wished it would never end. We saw each other two more times that week and it did feel like it would never end. But then I went home and e-mailing just didn’t do it. I never even held his hand, although I dreamed about it for months. In the end, we both fell in love with other people and let it go.

But every now and then I keep wondering whether I could have transformed that story into a love story. Whether we would’ve been great together if it wasn’t for the distance. I now dare to say it’s better the way things turned out. We all need that hope that comes with knowing you had that perfect thing right in front of you and you let it go out of not wanting to spoil it. That hope that makes us believe giving up is not always a bad thing.

I don’t believe we search for perfection in our relationships, I think we all look for a match, a match that would fit our own flaws, one that is insanely wrong and feels so good. We want things we can eventually let go of, not life-changing indispensable love. That kind is left for our imagination, for that amazing place where all the magic takes place.

So while keeping the wonders of meeting the perfect man in the back of our heads, let’s celebrate the other ones. Let’s raise a glass to complicated and weird and sometimes annoying, to the ones we have to learn to love and the ones we have to forgive from time to time, the ones we want to murder now and revive the next minute. Perfect is great, but wait until you meet the damaged. The real deal.

The one that got away will always be that one thing we wanted from life but never got. We might not think about it every day, we might even forget for a while. But one day, when we’re grandmas, we’ll open a box and look at a postcard and the whole skip a breath feeling will come back to us. Because fantasy love never leaves us. Never having to end it has made it part of us. Never even doing it has given us the power to write the story of what could have been in our heads over and over again and living it in our imagination protected it from all the darkness and dirt it would have faced in the real world. So we do live our own fairy tales, and Neverland is not as far as you might think.

Oh, young love!

Back when I was young, things were different. Boys didn’t text you, they wrote you letters. They didn’t pick you up with their ride in the middle of the night, they walked with you hand in hand in the sunset and then showed you the moon rising. They bought you flowers, not drinks. Yeah, when I was young, things seemed so much easier. Just that they weren’t.

As time goes by and we get jaded, we forget what it was like to be in ‘can’t breath without you’ love. How we spent nights dreaming about one look or touch of the hand. How our knees went soft and suddenly we grew butterflies in our stomach that move chaotically. But how did we get jaded? Where did we cross the line where we can laugh at the guy who says ‘forever’, where writing our names in the sand is corny, where just catching a glimpse of the other doesn't tingle all of our senses anymore?

I keep saying to myself whenever I get nostalgic that things were never as complicated as they are now. And it’s never true. Let’s be honest, suffering like a dog because a boy who didn’t even know your name had a new girlfriend was just plain stupid. When you were lucky enough to have him return the feelings, neither of you knew what to say or do and most of what happened in that relationship was just in your head. Not that things have changed much in this area ever since. Oh, and when one of those blitzkrieg loves came to an end, it brought weeks of tears, guilt trips or crushed self esteem, “omg, my life is over, I will never love again”. It wasn’t easier. It just seems more exciting from where we’re standing now.

But there was this particular thing I really miss. And I sometimes feel like I don’t have it in me anymore to go there. It’s summer romances. That amazing feeling of freedom you get on vacations, the arousal brought about by the smell of salty water or pine tree resin, all that energy you’ve canned for a while burst into these wicked fireworks of passion. It’s funny how the first few times we think it’ the real deal. We’ve met the man of our dreams, “but dammit, we have to go our separate ways next week”. That can only happen to pure spirits, those who still believe that letters can patch up a real relationship, to young souls in search of love. I know people have them at all ages, but I’ve grown to like things plain and simple and summer loves are a different cup of tea.

Young love has its perks. At least for a while, you can go guns blazing into something and not fear the consequences, because you are sure that this is it. You can say the big words and not choke laughing. You can be just as crazy about somebody as you can without the risk of being considered the stalker kind or a hysterical bitch. And most of all, you can give it all. After you’ve taken a few punches in the face from lady love, you’ll never be that open again, never invest as much, never confide as much in its power.

Of course we all fall silly in love from time to time, some for years, some for days. We may not be able to sleep or eat or think of other things, we’ll itch to get it over with. But we’ll invest so much less every time, because we now know what we didn’t know then. That there is no such thing as forever, our hopes and dreams are not safe with him and we’re eventually bound to lose one way or the other. I guess the only thing left to do is remember that feeling of invincibility from time to time, to lose the grip just like we used to and to learn a little trust in love and the ways in which it makes our lives better. If it does.

The grass is greener...

In my long trip through the forests of singleness I’ve come across so many stories about relationships I can’t help wondering whether they were lessons send by the universe to learn at the right time. So I thought I’d go through some of the things I’ve learned from people from the other side of the tracks.
First of all, I’ve learned never to assume. People may hook up with someone and give it a week or think it’s the love of their lives, but you never know. Treating every relationship with the care and respect it deserves is something we owe to ourselves. Of course those first few weeks are amazing and all, but infatuation does not guarantee success on the long run, it’s a battle and we should never forget it.
Talking about battles, it’s a hell of a tough one to get to know the other. And one thing we should learn when being with someone is that we are two different views on reality that meet. And that don’t have to merge in order for the thing to work. I’m so tired of seeing people trying to tailor their partner in order to make him or her be just what they were looking for. People have a past and it might come to shatter the current relationship. Or it might just help us better understand the person next to us through the lens of their life experiences. Those we say we love deserve to be appreciated for who they are and not an image we have in our heads.
A third thing that’s always coming up in conversations is cheating. People cheat whether we like it or not and it’s not that easy to predict what leads them to that. They can cheat while holding our hand and they can cheat and we’ll never find out about it. I now believe it comes to happen when people start looking for excitement outside their relationship. It does not mean they may not still be in love with their partner. It means they want something else for a change. It sounds light, right? Well, it’s a lot more complicated than that. As I’ve noticed lately, commitment is about being able to make plans with the other person, about being able to assume they’d be there for you in certain situations. Now people say cheating wrecks trust, and I think it mostly wrecks that certainty that you can count on your partner. Of course, there’s also our ego and it would never accept other puppies eating from the same bowl. Just like in the case of having a hard time accepting the other’s romantic past, fear of cheating feeds on the ego. And it transforms people.
Another thing that transforms people is distance. Distance freaks us out because it increases this uncertainty that is incompatible with commitment. Because we feel it increases the likelihood of cheating and because we start fearing that we might become less and less relevant to the other. Distance changes people in that it makes their ego inflate and with it all those slimy parasites we call jealousy, fear and anger. I’ve known amazing couples who can fight it. It’s usually patient people who have come to terms with how they can make it work. As for the rest of us, we can barely keep the boat floating when we’re together.
And when that boat sinks, we may spend some time asking ourselves what went wrong. But breakups are a power race. And somebody gets left behind. The funny thing is some of the champs may eventually regret it. And remember taking things for granted was a retarded thing to do. I met this amazing woman who was crazy in love with her boyfriend and they eventually broke up due to some of the reasons above. And now she’s fighting to get him back, but he’s stringing her along because there is no guarantee he won’t get dumped again. One thing I’ve learned from most of my “coupled” friends is that taking things for granted is the wrong way to go. Whether you take for granted that that person’s always going to be there or the fact that you are bound to be cheated upon or left, relationships are just as complex as the people in them. I must set these words aside and read them when I’m with somebody, because we so often think in a box about our relationships, we pretend we know so much about where we stand and what we want from them that we forget we’ll always be scared little children in the face of love.
Oh, I almost forgot about love. Or what we may call ‘coup de foudre’ or at least infatuation. Now this is a lesson I want to pass on from this side of the fence. It’s an incredibly rare thing and it makes people so fragile and yet gives them this crazy strength to outdo themselves. Of course we could talk about it forever. But what I’m saying is, when you’ve lost your head, enjoy the weightlessness, because pretty soon all those other demons I’ve been writing about will come to bite you in the ass.

Just friends

When I was a little girl my best friends were boys because all the chicks on my block were whiny little bitches who always ran crying to their mommy if I tried to show my infinite appreciation for them by throwing dust to their faces or tripping them and what not. Boys were always more of my kinda guys. They lived dangerously. Climbed trees, jumped off swings in motion and build forts out of carton boxes or snow. However, I knew then what I shouldn’t have forgotten now. We can’t be “just friends”. One of my closest playmates was this adorable little boy who would walk around pushing my doll’s toy stroller and talk to me about how we would get married when we grow up. Almost twenty years later, that perspective still freaks me out.
But I keep forgetting. And I start the same old creepy dance over and over again. I meet this guy who’s really cool and I could talk to him for hours. However, I have no romantic interest in him and I convince myself he doesn’t either. Which is likely to be true, but not to stay that way forever. So then I’m like hey dude let’s hang out, I love it I can do shots with you and not worry I’m gonna end up in someone’s bed the next morning, cause you’re such a good friend who’s gonna care for me. I invite him over to watch movies, share my heartaches with him and keep asking what’s wrong with guys and why don’t I have then figured out by now. He’s never going to provide an answer to that. Moreover, he’s soon going to be the reason I’m asking it.

I used to think there are barriers that can’t be crossed and that would keep things between us at the “just friends” level. Having a girlfriend or a wife does not stop your friends from eventually hitting on you. Neither does being friends to your ex-boyfriends, ex-boyfriends of your friends or being your own ex-boyfriends to whom you’ve made it perfectly clear there’s no sexual anything left between the two of you. Explaining to your friend how messed up you are or how you’ll never fall for him will only give him more reasons to become infatuated with you.
Spending a lot of time with the other sex is bound to eventually create tension. Especially when you’re hot and all of your friends are at least fairly attractive. Although, after the right amount of time, I believe the mermaid effect takes its toll on each of us. This is one of Barney “Awesome” Stinson's of ‘How I Met Your Mother’ theories and it says that no matter how uninterested you may be in someone, after the right amount of time, especially when you’re “on dry land”, they begin to look really attractive to you.

So now I’ve done it again. I think it happens to me quite often, and it’s mostly because I always remember the good times of crashing toy cars and crossing wood swords with my childhood friends and I keep forgetting what terrible tragedies my friendships to the opposite sex eventually bring along. You’d say I’m exaggerating, try explaining it to those girls whose boyfriends not only whine to me about how they’re bored in their relationships and how they cheat and how maybe they’d leave it all behind if I gave them a chance. And then to those really nice fellas who’ve waited for me to jump on board until they got rejected in a really unpleasant manner and eventually grew to hate me. Or to the ones who at least figured it out on their own, never had the balls to say anything, eventually ended up with some girl who makes them miserable and every now and then they ask themselves “what if”.
I’m not saying it never happened to me. It’s hurtful and annoying and it makes you ask yourself what’s wrong with you if that person likes you but not in that way. It’s something nobody deserves being put through and especially not someone you consider a friend. So next time I feel like I’ve been spending too much time with a guy I’m not really interested in, somebody should come over and remind me that boys and girls cannot just be friends. I give exceptions their fair “hats off”, but as far as rules go, it’s safer to stick with this one.