Three teenage girls were also getting off the train. I realized not only commuters take this train but also high school students. I don't know why that was important. I guess it reminded me of the 90-minute commute I made every morning and then every afternoon when I went to high school. I guess, I have a lot of memories that really cling on. I wonder, really, how much I am just a walking bag of memories.
My sister, Mei, the older of the two, called last night. She complained that my blog entries were too long, and confessed that she didn't always read the entirety of each of my entries, though she tried to read as many as possible! She said, and I suppose it's because she's a lawyer, she wanted to read my blogs carefully, making sure she didn't miss any details. Well, it's not like there are many details. From the very beginning I wrote that nothing much would happen as my days were quite simple, quite predictable, and I usually don't write in my blogs on weekends, when more things happened.
What is this blog? I started it to document my days, my thoughts, my changing ideas with the new year that marks the beginning of a new life. A little arbitrary since I could have said going to Buenos Aires marked the beginning. But January 3rd, when I started the new job, seems like a good starting point. And while it's true that each day has been much simpler than before January 3rd, my life is never without things to say. Perhaps that's why, as my sister slightly complained, I write "so much."
(Just so you know, if you have to read just a little, read the last paragraphs.)
I am more and more used to my job now. I am working a lot. The first week I was waiting a lot, now I am finishing a project, and learning both more about programming and more about what my team does, even what its department does, too. I haven't talked much about this job since that first week. Working on this project I also started, much sooner than I expected, to get to know some of the people. There's this chubby Korean about my age. He's married, his wedding band seems sometimes to call out to me as loud as if you were talking to me. In any case, I didn't think I would get to know, want to get to know, another man, especially another Asian. But he's super friendly, always reaching out, sort of like in the gregarious American reaching out way. He and others often invite me to have lunch with them. I try to do it once a week, on Fridays. Other times, I need to eat alone.
That's because this new life started with another heartbreak. It's not as bad as the ones before, but worse than I expected, especially when I was alone with my lovely food-borne bacteria. The sharp pain wasn't coming only from my stomach or diaphragm, but also a little higher, to my left. And yet, like the previous times when my heart was atomized, I have been learning a lot, about life, about myself, especially the shortcomings. And I continue learning. Even last night, when my sister called.
Instead of just talking about how her little boy was doing (I always forget about her girl, who's quiet but just as cute), or saying superficial "I am good. Doing fine. No problem.", we talked about me. When we talked about deeper things, we used to talk about family, really. This time, we eventually talked about family. That's because talking about my struggles with love inevitably leads to family. Doesn't it with everyone?
What touched me most about our conversation was when I asked her if she was in love with her husband when they started, in the beginning. They seem very loving, very much like the ideal or average, at least, married couple. They never fight in front of us, and I never felt suppressed tension. I never felt intense jealousy about their marriage, but I know I would be very happy if I had one like that. In any case, because it was so "average", I wondered if they were crazy about each other in the beginning. I never asked this of my family members: love. She said they were; she said they had traveled long distances to see each other, long for each other even for the smallest things. That's when I was jealous. But I would be jealous regardless of who was talking. I want very much that someone longed for me, provided, of course, I wanted them, too. What made it touching was that it was my sister. And somehow, it instilled some love in me. I got off the conversation reaffirming that I deserved someone who would give at least that: wanting me. She didn't have to sacrifice anything, cross oceans, walk on fire, to be with me (though I would, apparently, do all this and more for someone I'm crazy about). We talked about the past nine years of my life and I realized I was always following women who withheld, who couldn't or wouldn't give me this simplicity of: I want you. It is no judgment on them, but a reflection of how much I have failed to demand from life. for all these years I have settled with having someone around that I loved; I never simply moved on when someone didn't want me. I always stuck around, overtly or secretly hoping they would come around.
My sister's simpler life (in the sense of finding someone, or being found) reminded me that I needed to embrace what I deserved and walk the road of life tall with a proud heart. And I sort of did that when I was in Buenos Aires. Wait and see is just another trick of my weakness that robs me of my dignity.
But to be fair, I very much wanted a fantasy to come true. The fantasy that came so much earlier and more easily for my sister: the fantasy of having someone who thinks about me. Two weeks ago after the second blizzard pounded on us, I realized I wanted eagerly for someone to think about me and call me up for a walk in the snow. My sister and her husband probably don't do that anymore, though likely to be doing it with their children. But still, they would have. Anyone who wants me would have. This fantasy that seems so elusive to me isn't a trick of my weakness. It's a genuine desire to be loved. The problem is really when I try to impose this fantasy on reality, not wait for it. And the trouble is worse when I impose it on someone who has no interest in fulfilling it.
My first girlfriend from high school asked me what my fantasies were. I admitted I had none. (Hers was making love at the altar, how bizarre and trite.) I am not sure if this fantasy of mine is equally lame: someone to want me. But it's too painful; it has been. Two Independence Days ago, I brought a girl on my annual Independence Day visit to my grand mother, where other extended family members were. I didn't make any big deal out of it, only told my parents the day of the visit. She was just a "friend", but really, another drama companion for the year and a half before that. I introduced her to my grandmother, who obviously showed a lot of hopes for her as a source of my current and future happiness. Even more heartbreaking for me was to introduce her to my little nephew. I even took photos of them, him with his bizarre haircut, her with her amazing smile holding him. And I still can't look at that picture. That's one of the forms of the fantasy: to have someone be part of this pretty messed up family that I was born into. My grandmother was my greatest hero. My nephew embodies my purest love. And now, I don't even speak to that woman anymore. And then, there are my parents. I never wanted to show them any woman in my life. But secretly, I want to, and when I did, secretly, even secretly to myself, I want her to be part of the happiness that I was fostering with my parents.
I told my sister about the fantasy, and about realizing what danger I put my heart in by reliving this fantasy. I told her it was wrong to expect anyone to live this fantasy, to expect them to make me happy in ways I am too impatient or too weak to do. When I talked about the fantasy that involved my parents, she helped me realize my progress with my parents. I have come to see them as beautiful human beings, not demons that were the cause of all my problems. I have no angry thoughts about them. But I also don't see them as parents, just two weak old people who never were happy. I haven't still felt or welcomed their love as parents, the love I have never felt. And if you never felt parental love from parents, you of course never felt it in life. I need to find a way to get that from them before it's too late.
Enough of this introspection and dissection of my current turmoils. Some bad news happened today. I need some time to think about it. It made me think how egocentric I have been, still feeling the world lived around me. Others are suffering. My best friend is suffering.
No comments:
Post a Comment