Easter for me is about a new start from some old origin. A rebirth. Whether it's the pagan tradition or the Christian one, it is originated from celebration of spring, the season when new life comes from the old soils dormant over the winter.
Two days ago I completely severed contacts with that woman I've had a very rocky and rough relationship with over the past year. I could talk about all the sentimental stuff. About last April, when we started "dating", about my birthday that is coming soon that reminds me of last birthday when she stayed with me, making it the best birthday ever. I can mope about the loss of these few good things that are often overshadowed by the turmoil that marked this past year.
But instead, I want to talk about a different April. It is the April of 2008. Or was it 2007? I think 2007. Doesn't matter. Time flies fast with all this drama.
(I just realized the shampoo I bought is called "Clean Drama", how characteristic!)
It was the wedding of my then-best friend's sister. My sister and I were invited, and I was at my best friend's apartment. She had just moved to New York City, her hometown. When she was planning to move back there, she had expressed desire for me to go with her. She didn't explicitly say that we should start dating, but I can bet that that was in her mind. She didn't dare to explicitly say so because for a while now I was interested in someone else. We went to China prior to her move, and there was a bit of drama there, too. After that the drama continued on and off. I was in some ways irresponsible in leading her to believe that she could have what she wanted. What did she want? To move to New York with me, to start a new life with me. At the time I didn't truly understand how high that expectation was: to move with someone, to start a new life with someone. And so I didn't really pay attention to the effect of disappointment. Not that I would have fulfilled her expectation had I understood the impact of the disappointment, but rather, I would have been more sensitive.
She was becoming needy. She wrote letters to me, telling me how great I was. But little by little, the tone darkened. She wanted to blame me for something, but ultimately, she would blame herself for everything. I remember going to dinner with her at the Afghan restaurant near where she lived. I remember needing to catch the 10:40PM train back here, and seeing her disappointment that I had to leave, and remembering how I was tortured between going home in time and not disappointing her.
Her move was not smooth at all. I can't complain about mine (though worse things could be waiting for me). She bought this co-op with the full expectation to resettle in her home town. But being New York, the situation was hardly smooth; the seller didn't even show up at the closing. She was upset. Another friend and I were there for her, to witness her frustration. But even more tortuous, she encountered bed bugs in her apartment. She needed my help every weekend. I was glad to help, but what I didn't like was the feeling that nothing I did was enough. No matter how much I helped, she always found some reason to be disappointed, and I can say that trying to help someone 1.5 hours away driving, which I hate, is not easy. She was tortured by the neediness and the guilt of neediness.
To make things seemingly infinitely worse, she started getting sick. She was having trouble walking. It would become progressively painful to walk a few months after she moved in. She really needed my help, but perhaps more, my presence. That was when she was writing a lot of letters to me. Love and torment. I have all those letters. I sometimes read them to remind myself of the complications of life, often reading them is very liberating. The last letter, after about eleven, she told me I couldn't be close to people, that I didn't know how to be close. It was true, of course, but later in life I realized that's the problem with a lot of people in this world.
A little after that I found myself in her living room along with other people, getting ready for her sister's wedding. She was having trouble walking. Everyone had to be patient and walk little steps with her. With the exception of a brief encounter, that day was the last day I saw her. I was not really thinking about her, just enjoying being happy. I was happy because I was going on a trip with this girl I met in tango. We were going to the West Coast, to San Francisco. Actually, we weren't going anywhere long. She was going to the Southwest on a tour, and I was just flying with her to spend a few nights in San Francisco and then we would part ways before meeting up again in Los Angeles. I would be visiting the deserts of Southern California for those few days. I was excited. Not really for the trip since I have been to San Francisco, but rather traveling with a woman I was attracted to. I wanted to share my excitement, and I made the mistake of doing so in front of her. After that day she wrote one more email to me explaining how crass it was that I should mention my trip in front of her on the day of her sister's wedding. Her sister is younger than her, but she always managed to succeed much better in the realm of romance, success that culminated now on wedding an amazing man. My then-best friend always carried the baggage of being the older sister destined to become a spinster. So it was already stressful enough to have to be the maid of honor on her younger sister's wedding, and my expressed excitement made her feel even lonelier, poked directly at her deepest insecurities.
I didn't understand this then. In fact, I was very defensive, not understanding why it was wrong to share my excitement with people I cared about. Perhaps it's karma, but I have gone through not a few of the same experience but from her side. How many times has a "friend" tried to tell me something great about her romantic life knowing very well that I had feelings for her? Of course, I was never in a devastating situation as my then-best friend was that April, three years ago, or four. I remember this woman telling me she wasn't interested in dating me because she was having trouble feeling connected to Asians, but a few weeks later, she told me in the same kitchen bar stool that she was dating this Asian man. Now this woman was telling me just a month ago that she wasn't ready to date anyone, and tells me two days ago she was dating someone, and not just anyone, but someone I know. And part of her motive was to quash any remaining hopes I have for "us." Between this current woman and that Asian-dating one a few years ago, there were others. I want to be upset with these people, but I realize I did something not so dissimilar that April three years ago.
My then-best friend no longer writes back to me. She didn't even bother to tell me to stop contacting her, which I did on many occasions over the years. She simply disappeared from my life. I was upset with her for throwing away a friendship that started in high school. But I also understand that sometimes, even the most cherished relationships backed by years of love and drama would need a break, long, perhaps even indefinite. The trouble with the break with this current woman is that I will see her and the guy if I want to keep dancing tango. I have always suspected something was happening, and that suspicion alone always tortured me, turned me into some sort of twisted, needy monster that I didn't like. Now that it's official, to me at least, it is slightly different. I no longer am tortured by the uncertainty, the hope that my suspicions were wrong. But at the same time, the certainty means all my love is stripped away, from her as well as for him, whom I also know quite well. And with her, once all the love is stripped away, the only thing left is all the resentments, all the hatred that brewed over the past year.
I could feel sorry for myself that her insensitive declaration of her news in her private life came at a stressful time in my life. Came over Easter when I need the peace Easter offers. Came a week before my birthday, a time that reminds me of how she made me feel beautiful last birthday, in contrast to the romance-less ones before. I could do all this, but then I would be too self-centered. I have done something similar to what she did to someone I loved much more than this woman loved me. There must be some explanation for all this craziness. Knowing I have wrong someone in the past doesn't exactly help me feel good about being the victim of a similar act.
What is important now is counting the positive parts of a given situation. It is Easter. It is a time to remember that it's possible there exists a loving God who sacrificed his own son to spread love to a world so full of walls. I am moving back to the city I love, and to let one woman and her news ruin the excitement is silly. And in my move I am not totally alone. I have a good handful of people to help me, more emotionally than physically.
I still woke up this Good Friday feeling sad. Woke up thinking about this woman that I never wish to speak to again. And the rational side of me knows how wrong she is in my life, how it would really have been better if she had refused to date me in the beginning and we would never had anything to do with each other this whole past year, how it was a real waste this entire year trying to court her, to prove to her my worth, when I am worth a lot more than what she could give me. But then the sentimental side can't let go of last year's birthday, let go of the late night talks we had, but more harmful, though, is can't let go of the expectations built for her because she never fulfilled any of them. I wake up every morning feeling alone because she isn't there. Now I know that she wakes up sometimes with someone else. How will I ignore that thought when I see them? Tango is full of these love triangles, and people seem to get over it. So must I.
The best thing that has happened to us is, strangely, this insensitive piece of news she had given me. In the past, the only way to stop the cycle of drama with a woman who refused to reciprocate and with whom I refused to be just friends is such news. No emails, no schemes, no tricks could stop the cycle. But the news that she is dating someone is the surest way for me to cut off everything. Even though I will likely have to tolerate the sight of them together, I hope soon I will move on and truly forget about her. In much the same way my then-best friend has moved on and unlikely to think much about me.
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