Entry #686677, added on 02-06-10 @ 11:21 pm EST
Entry Access Restriction: None.
| I'll have a cup of tea and tell you of my dreaming | Entry #686677 |
M. wanted to take me out to dinner, even though, as he said, we cannot really afford such luxuries until I am gainfully employed. Still, he continued, we need it, to go out occasionally, even if what we spend on one meal could feed us for a week if used on groceries instead. I'm not cheap, in fact, I am a reformed luxury-holic, because eating was just what we did growing up. Fridays were for 'Bellamy's', a restaurant that had a pub feel to it, and I always ordered the clubhouse sandwich with fries. Saturday's were for 'Red Lobster', because my father's friend owned that particular franchise, and because we most often got our drinks for free. Sunday's were for Chinese or pizza, whichever appealed to us most, and I won't even count how many nights we brought hamburgers or submarine sandwiches home. That I'm not obese is something of a miracle, truly. Anyway, since living with M. my habit of eating in restaurants has been eradicated. My gallbladder situation helped in that department as well, because nearly every restaurant I ate in while nursing the offending organ caused an attack, even if I opted for soup and salad. So, when M. said we should go out tonight, I had mixed feelings. That we go out so rarely these days meant that we had to make the right choice, because it's always a horrible thing to spend money on something that isn't worth it. He wanted the local steak house, which is great, but I knew it would be crowded, as it always is on a Saturday night. We got there, and sure enough, the hostess told us that it would be at least an hour wait. Waiting that long with a child wouldn't work, so we trudged off into the winter blue night looking for a different venue. The mediterranean restaurant was full, the Italian restaurant was full and it had absolutely nothing kid-friendly on the menu, which was written in Italian. We thought about the Irish pub down the street, but knew it would be full of drunk people who had been at the ice-rink all day. I'd been hoping we'd go the Indian place since M. brought up the idea of eating out, and when we began walking up the cobblestone walkway to its front doors, I have to say that I thought fate may have lent a hand.
The thing that I hate about restaurants at night, particularly in the winter, is that everyone seems to go for 'mood lighting', the result of which is blind-eating. Sure, I look better by candlelight, but I could barely make out where my food was, and the wee one was falling asleep at the table. I managed to drop a piece of lettuce on the floor, and endless grains of rice on the tablecloth, but at least no one could see me do it. That one small criticism aside, the restaurant was great and remains a personal favourite. I am now brimming with green salad, bhoona chicken, palao rice, naan bread, papadum, mango lassi and galub jamun, a two ball pastry in a sweet syrup. Oh, and I had a glass of Merlot, which probably would have packed more of a punch had I not eaten my weight in food. I am uncomfortable now, as is M. who drank two lassi drinks and ate a bit of my meal when I couldn't finish it. I ate the galub jamun because the wee one ordered it and decided it was 'yucky', so instead of wasting it, I forced it on myself. I am rotund. I am a planet.
I find that sometimes, when I go out at night particularly, I experience depersonalization.
Depersonalization: The symptoms include a sense of automation, going through the motions of life but not experiencing it, feeling as though one is in a movie, feeling as though one is in a dream, feeling a disconnection from one's body; out-of-body experience, a detachment from one's body, environment and difficulty relating oneself to reality.
It's an anxiety thing. It's really one of the worst features of it, too.
Anyway, I start thinking of all kinds of weird and disturbing things, like what if I lived all alone in this city, how I'd cope, and such. It isn't pleasant, to say the least. I envision a life in which I am a widow (can I be a widow if I'm only common-law? Oh, and am I common?), and M. is dead, and I imagine trying to live here, going out at night like most normal people, and I realize I am built for the life of a recluse. I lack the money to be a Salinger, though. I envisioned this horrible life situation and it almost spoiled my dinner, because I was not connected to the happy situation at the table in front of me. This is most annoying. I am looking for someone to blame for this because I need it to make sense, and blaming someone will at least give me a starting point. I choose to blame my mother, then. She turned every happy occasion in my life into something dour. I therefore decree that my inability to enjoy a meal without thinking about things are going to fall down around me is my mother's fault.
So, I come home and I immediately do all things that make me feel 'normal', like come to my computer where all the people I read and the stories I tap into feel safe and warm somehow. Isn't it funny how I find constancy and comfort in a simulated life when my real life feels like a foreign land at times? I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one.
The job situation is back to needling me, which is likely the underlying cause of my emotionally turbulent evening. I know that school is coming to an end soon, that I am way ahead in my courses and might accidentally finish before I'm meant to, and that my funding will be cut off when I officially earn my diploma. This means that I need to find a job as soon as I can, and I have applied for two positions, one at the local university and one at the hospital where C. works. I haven't listed C. as a reference because I wanted to get a job on my own, but now that I am seeing that knowing the right people is the only thing a person really needs these days, I guess my principles amount to stupidity. To say that the job opportunities are limited is an understatement, and I am truly scared about what's going to happen. If I can't find a job in my field, will I end up back in retail hell? Oh, how I wish I were talented enough to write for a living, or that I could make exquisite chocolate, or own a little tea room that had monthly literary themes. I am truly uninspired by most professions out there and feel my stomach twist at the thought of having to deal with a forty-hour work week again. I could work eighty hours a week if I liked the job well enough, it's just that most jobs seem like they cut into your life, don't they? I understand the need to be productive and to contribute, obviously, but I'm sure we all wish we had more personal freedom at times. I'd love to feel like my life was my own, instead of forcing myself to strive to meet deadlines and achieve goals which have nothing to do with making me a happier person. Maybe I'm cynical, now, because of the job I had before and how thankless and degrading it was at times. Maybe I will find a job that is perfectly suited to me, and I will go to work smiling everyday. Also, I should probably be grateful to just get a job. No matter how much of an improvement they say the economy is experiencing, I have seen no sign of it in the job market. I am frightened.
***
A few days ago, I was sitting on the leather chair by the fireplace, the chair that is ripped and stripped by cats with nails and a child with a compulsion to pull the leather off in strips, and I was fiddling around with M's laptop, which he said I can use whenever I want so that I don't have to come upstairs to use my own computer. I was grateful to him for it, because it lets me sit with the wee one when she watches television or paints at her table. So, he and she were sitting on the loveseat, practicing her guitar, and I went into Facebook to check on the latest drama. I saw that M. had updated his status to say something about how the wee one had taken her first guitar lesson, and underneath it was a little 'thumbs up' sign, and the statement that '-------- likes this (!). My antennae went up, and I looked over at M. and asked, rather viciously, who -------- was. He looked dumbfounded by my tone, and sort of meekly answered that she was a friend of another friend from high school, that he'd known her from that time. My eyes narrowed, and I leaned forward, "That wouldn't be -------- your first girlfriend, would it?". He looked even more flustered and said something like, 'oh, yeah', before dismissing me entirely.
So, despite logic telling me I was being ridiculous, I pulled myself in line for an almighty pout. A couple hours into that, he seemed to cop on that something was off about me, and when I made the flippant remark to the wee one who said she wanted pasta for dinner rather than whatever I was making, that 'I'd like chocolate mousse for dessert, but that doesn't mean I'll get it.' But, I was wrong, because as soon as dinner was done, M. disappeared for ten minutes and when he returned, he had chocolate mousse with him. I was impressed, but then I was even more suspicious. When I was with R. and I wanted to talk to M., I'd go to the store to buy ice-cream as a cover and call him from a phone booth there. I know. I am still ashamed of myself for it, but to be honest, I was always gone longer than ten minutes.
The next night, after stupidly telling my sister P. about this and hoping she'd tell me I was insane, she told me that she'd be mad, too. In fact, she'd made her husband delete his FB account altogether when he accepted two former girlfriends as friends and one of them had a profile picture of herself wearing a bikini. I was now feeling defensive of M. as well as suspicious. I hate when women do that, complain about their men and then rise to defend him when you agree with them. I wasn't having it. Instead, I waited until the wee one was asleep and then I went in for the kill.
'I need to talk to you about something,' I said as we watched the credits to 'Grey's Anatomy' roll.
'Oh?,' he looked worried.
'Last night, when I asked who -------- was, you said she was a friend of a friend from high school. I just don't understand why you didn't say straight away that she was your first girlfriend when you know I know who she is.'
'What?', he asked, confused.
'I've seen photos of the two of you together when you were dating, and you told me her name, so why wouldn't you just tell me straight away who she was?'
'I guess I don't think of her that way, honestly. She was part of a group I hung out with, we dated for a while and it never got physical, which you knew, so she doesn't really factor in to my thoughts much at all.'
'Did you 'friend' her or the other way around?'
'She requested me,' he said, trying not to laugh. I don't blame him. 'Look, if you want me to delete her, I'll do it right now. She truly doesn't mean a thing to me, friend or otherwise. It's been something like thirty-three years, for one thing, and for another, we broke up because we weren't really into each other.'
'No,' I shook my head, feeling stupid. 'I just think that if a former girlfriend requests to be in some kind of contact with you, I should know about it, that's all. Things happen, and once upon a time, she was important to you, that's all.'
'I think you're making her more important than she actually is,' he smiled. 'We dated when we were teenagers. If I had my ex-wife as a friend, I'd see your dilemma, but not a person I haven't seen since the mesozoic era.'
'Would it bother you if the tables were turned?' I asked in an attempt to defend myself.
'Only if it were the last one you were with.' Meaning R.
I looked at him for a minute, thinking.
'Look,' I said, ' I just need you to always be honest with me. I wasn't honest with R. and I will always regret my behaviour because he didn't deserve to be treated that way. I get that this is me being paranoid but you have to understand that the very last person I ever thought would cheat eventually did.'
He looked at me with a questionning stare.
'Me,' I responded. 'To this day I can't believe I behaved that way because it never occurred to me that I was capable of it. I have values and standards for myself, and when I met you, I let all of them go, which I needed to do, I think, but I hurt him in the process and I'm still trying to get my head around it. It's like I think that if I could do what I did, anyone could do it, no matter how adamant they are about never cheating. I'm aware, now, and I don't want to ever be in that situation again, just like I never want to be deceived. I am a jealous person, and I want to be able to be sure about the people I love. I am not just building trust in you, but I am rebuilding it for myself. You're just going to have to deal with me.'
He smiled, came over to me and wrapped an arm around my shoulders. 'Okay,' he said, 'and if you want me to delete her, I have no problem with that.'
'No,' I said stiffly, 'and, just so you know, most of the guys on my friend list are gay.'
'Okay,' he nodded.
Well, a few of them are, anyway.
***
The other evil thing about FB is that, as I've mentioned before, my sisters both have R.'s wife as a friend, so when I click on their profiles, I am occasionally greeted with her face staring back at me. Yesterday, I was afforded the luxury of seeing a new photo of both her and R. all dressed up, obviously taken at a wedding. What made me giggle was that I believe it was taken at my sister K.'s ex-boyfriend's wedding, and I know she smarts over that relationship to this day, so I think it's kind of fitting that she's forced to see a photo taken at a wedding she thought he was incapable of ever having. I get that it's childish, but sibling rivalry has no shelf life. Anyway, because I have no self-control, I clicked on it and made it bigger, and I had to take note that it was the first time I'd ever seen him in a tie. Apparently, even at his own wedding he wore a polo shirt and shorts. He looked good, if I do say so. The thing that floored me, though, is that he is looking older. For some reason this unnerved me. In my head, he was still the good-looking, boyishly-charming fellow I'd lucked upon in his seventeenth year, and though he'd begun losing his hair while we were together, he fixed the problem by shaving his head and growing a goatee so that people thought the baldness was intentional. In this photo, though, there are lines around his eyes, and the way he wears his hair is not biker-chic but is, instead, nearly middle-aged bald guy. Why did I think that time had stood still for him? The thing is, it's only been seven years since I last saw him, and not even that, more like six and a half. He is beginning to look like an older man, and I don't know that man. It's...weird, and a little upsetting, if you want to know the truth. It's not like I think I look like I did when I was eighteen, either, but R., I just never thought about him getting older. It bothers me. Also, I was delighted to note that seeing him with her in the photo, holding one another and looking happy, didn't bother me. In fact, I was happy to see him happy, which is a definite sign of growth, I think. Then, I went to bed and dreamed of him all night, and woke up back at square one. I need to get a handle on this at some point. I really don't think he loses sleep over me, anymore.
I'm not going to try to figure out where my head is at, anymore, when it comes to him. Obviously, I have no real understanding of what I'm feeling, and I'm just going to have to go with it. I may vent here, but I want to be done talking about him with anyone else. At this point, the only one having trouble with it is me, and I'm beginning to think it's about guilt rather than any residual love. Yes, I will always love him to a certain extent, but that I could see him with her and not be wounded in some way means that what I'm feeling isn't necessarily definable. I just need to carry on, let the dreams come when they come and not worry that it means more than it does.
Most of the people I know get over these things so much faster than I do. I don't know where it comes from.
|
© Copyright 2010 katwoman45 (UN: katwoman45 at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
katwoman45 has granted Writing.Com, its affiliates and its syndicates non-exclusive rights to display this work.
|
Content Rating Notice: Recommended for Readers 18 Years and Older Only
Static Items
Books
Forums
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
