going backwards, going forward
“let life happen to you. believe me: life is in the right, always.”
-rainer maria rilke
have you ever met someone that moved during new year’s eve? i don’t mean the day of new year’s eve, i mean the night, i mean a person that was moving boxes at midnight. a while back i would have thought the idea was crazy, and then i found myself carrying boxes full of books to my new apartment at midnight. my neighbor, drunk and somehow excited, looked at me puzzled and said “happy new year man”. and i told him, really believing it, “dude, you have no idea how motherfucking great it’s going to be”.
this year was going to be motherfucking great because i was finally living to my standards. having ended a relationship that was somewhat toxic-and i say somewhat because i can admit that i have a penchant for drama, but i am sure it was toxic indeed-i moved and decided to start a life where i did what i wanted to do. i got myself a cute apartment in the neighborhood that i always wanted to live in, and slowly filled it with furniture i liked, prints i liked, objects that served a purpose. i had friends over for dinner. i had manfriends over for drinks. i slept in my bed until noon, sometimes with companions. i went to yoga and came back to make dinner, watch a movie, read in silence. and yet, somehow, things were not motherfucking great.
if i had to choose the moment when i realized that things were not so perfect it would be the day i was in so much pain i had to go to the emergency room. i had some dental work done months before, and it just never felt right. then the pain started creeping in, but for months i kept it under control with ibuprofen. and then, all of the sudden, the pain did not go away, and it was getting worst, and i had veins throbbing in my forehead, and i popped capillaries from putting so much strain on my face. to make it worst, i had just met a guy that i was really interested in, and i didn’t want all of this shit to show. long story short, i excused myself to go to the hospital, and a dear friend of mine went with me and kept my mother updated in the process. a week later i had an abscess in my jaw so big i barely had a neck. three days later i filled myself with vicodin and gin and boarded a plane to puerto rico, where i had dental surgery and my parents took care of me.
the day of the surgery i cried like a baby from the morning until the end of the day. my father kept asking me if i was in pain, but that wasn’t really the point. i felt the most alone i had felt in my life. i thought of all the sleepless nights in my apartment, in pain. i thought of how long i had not eaten because i could not swallow anything but liquids. i thought of all the times i felt like calling friends and asking them for favors, but i did not because i was ashamed. and i thought of how i had to fly to a country i don’t specifically like so my parents could take care of me, a grown-ass 27 year-old man.
the year went from motherfucking great to you will die alone and toothless. i had always known that i would be alone when i came to chicago, to the united states, to the life of an adult that refuses to settle in a country that has nothing for him. i knew, but i had never felt it so deep that it hurt my bones. i kept thinking about how i was trying so hard to make everything work, and yet very little was going in the right direction. i felt like i was pushing a damaged grocery cart throughout the aisles of a supermarket-i was putting a lot of steering power to make the darn cart go in a somewhat straight fashion.
after countless five hour naps fueled by painkillers and any sort of alcoholic beverage i could find, i came back to chicago somewhat depressed. i came back in the middle of the winter, to a job as a graduate student that i could care less about. i came back to a place where i thought my friends were not friends. i came back to a city full of men that rejected me in one way or another. in the recurrent motif of those days, i started crying in my car while driving home. i got back, took my last codeine, slept for 12 hours. after which i started doing what i could do, one day at a time.
i embraced that i am still a graduate student, that i don’t like it, but that it will change soon.
i embraced that often people don’t have the same ideas as i do.
i embraced that i had to take care of myself, because i only had myself.
i embraced that i have to ask for what i want, not expect people to give it to me because it is obvious.
i embraced that i had different levels of friendship. some are really friends. some are people i hang out with. some are people that i sort of have to deal with even when i really don’t like them that much.
i embraced that i was hurt, mostly, because i had given people the power to do so.
i embraced that i was responsible for making the mistakes i had. some were fun. some were not fun, at all.
i embraced, and i am still doing so, that although i am angry at him (for very valid reasons), i stayed in that relationship because i was scared and i am responsible for that, not him.
i embraced that i was tired.
i embraced that somehow he was everything that i am not.
that was a lot of embracing, but i did it all and got to a place where i was quiet and calm. days passed and i even felt confident enough to quit smoking. then i met a man that cares about me the moment i was least expecting it. i have gotten emails from certain men apologizing for certain behaviors. a boy added me again in a social networking site after running into him twice in two months, just to realize that we were both idiots for trying to make something happen (i believe this is his way of apologizing). i have fewer but stronger friendships. i am still trying to do headstands in yoga regularly. i feel a lot better. this might not be a motherfucking great year, but it is one of painful progress that will be remembered.
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