Just a couple of quick announcements: I was messing with the html code of blogger and managed to wipe out all of my cool links, but I did get a cached version of it. I still want a three column layout, and it doesn’t look like I’ll be able to get that with blogspot, so I may move soon. Sorry. Unless someone can tell me how to do an html code, then I’d be really grateful. I’d even make you soup.
But on to the post. Last Friday, for the first time in about a year I said goodbye to someone. My roommate. I had planned to it when I 1) signed the new lease and 2) handed over the deposit, so that I was confident I had a new place and he wouldn’t talk me out of it. I had those two things, so I felt prepared in telling him, and on my way home my stomach turned flips and I got some severe chest pressure. Good thing I hadn’t had anything to eat. So he was just getting up from his nap and walking around naked (which I really don’t like to see) but fortunately he was sober. So I told him he’d have his rent in a few days, and I was leaving in a few weeks. He took it better than I thought he would. Of course, I didn’t tell him the real reason I was leaving, I just told him the less offensive one (the new place is cheaper). He’s been civil enough to me, and while we were brushing our teeth this morning he said his plea: he could’ve lowered the rent for me. what’s the place like? You’re moving to that part of town (it’s a nice part of Oakland)? Can he come see me? Why don’t I want to stay with him? He’s asking all this while he’s looking at my ass. Whatever.
What’s weird is that it hurt to say goodbye to him. I knew I had to be firm, otherwise I would’ve caved into staying with him. I didn’t want to tell him I was sort of looking for another place. Imagine how awkward that would’ve been. He didn’t take it as bad as I thought he would’ve and that added on to my guilt, and even though I’m the one who made the decision, I was the one who ended up crying and feeling like a douchebag. Sure, I could’ve stayed. I could’ve tried to get him to not smoke pot in the common areas, to share the living room, not eat my food, and stop staring at me when I walk past him, and maybe to clean up after himself. But the fundamental problem in our roommate-ship is that I had to negotiate the price of the rent down to something I could afford, and I guess he presumed there would be favors on certain things. Maybe that’s where he got the idea I was going to cook, clean and sleep with him, and when I couldn’t let that continue he got resentful. He didn’t want me in the common spaces when he was home. He didn’t want to help clean, and whenever we got into an argument, he said it was his house, his heat, his gas, his electricity, and his water. I was just staying there. And when he asked me for something sexual and he finally got the hint that no means no, he turned my heat off, so I had to look elsewhere for a living space.
It’s gotten to the point that when I return home from work, I touch the door and brace myself for him, because there he’ll be blasting the World Poker Series, playing internet poker and getting stoned out of his mind. I couldn’t handle. My job can be stressful enough, I shouldn’t have to deal with drama when I go to a place I’m paying to stay at. So I took my chances, and after 30 painful roommate interviews, I found a place that I like and where they like me. I’m looking forward to this, but I’m still upset with myself that I couldn’t find a way to make this work with my current roommate. I had to second guess myself after I told him and was racked with all of these delusions — he helps kids, he’s a nice guy, he’s a teacher, he’s in a band, he has a lovely girlfriend (I’m really going to miss his girlfriend). But when I come home and I see a million and one little coffee grinds at the bottom of the stopped up sink, I know I’ve made the right decision. I had to get out of there.
I spoke to Will about this and he asked me to talk about my Dad. Again. My dad died from lung cancer when I was ten, and he had been diagnosed with it for five years prior to his death. At his funeral I didn’t cry, because I convinced myself that wasn’t him. It didn’t look like him. But the moments where his deafening absence was felt the most, it wasn’t when I was at a school play, or when I didn’t make the dance team, or any of those other cliches. It was when I was in the sixth grade and I got a really high score on my paper, and I ran home to tell him about it because we always talked about those things. But when I got home no one was there. That was when I realized he wasn’t there. And to be honest, I don’t think I ever found someone to replace that special time we had to talk about papers.
So maybe Will’s point is that I have a difficult time saying goodbye. I had about five years to adjust to the idea that he’d be gone, and it still hurt to think about. Even now, when it comes to saying goodbye it hurts, even if it’s a first or second meeting. It’s probably because I don’t have much family, and the ones I have are sort of there. They aren’t always available emotionally to be there for me. So when I meet someone who could potentially be my friend I’m disappointed when it doesn’t work out in my favor. And even when I know it’s a friendship that won’t work out or give me what I need, I still stay in them with some serious defensive hope. It’s like experiencing the grief of letting someone go is too difficult for me to bear. And that’s probably because people enter and exit suddenly in my life. No one wants to to stay. They only get what they want and then leave, since I might not have been what they were looking for in the first place.
When it comes to family love and relationships, I’m not very close with much of my family, and the ones I’m close to, have this ebb and flow. The love may have been strong, but inconsistent in the family members who showed it to me on a regular basis, so whenever it came to friends and loves and such, I always feel as though I’m reaching from a pool of not enough. And when someone choosing to not be in my presence (which is way more often than someone accepting me) it brings up all of those feelings, even if it lasts for a minute. I keep wondering if I should change myself, then someone would like me more, but then they’d like a person that I’m really not.
There have only been a handful of times when I have ended a relationship, or said goodbye. A little over a year ago my first love and I decided to stop contacting each other because we wanted different things (he really just wanted me to go away and he didn’t have the guts to say it until I confronted him), and on that New Year’s Eve I vowed to keep people in my life who wanted to be there. So I made more of an effort to get out there and know people, but I didn’t say goodbye to any of my friendships. I had a friend named C. She and I expressed some interest in each other romantically, and we even hooked up a few times, but nothing really came of it. We were in this circle dialouging for four years or so that went like this: I really liked her, she really liked me too, but there were always issues. She found me comforting, cozy and was attracted to my sensitivity, but she wanted someone thinner, sleeker, sexier, more exciting, more confident and more dangerous, who would appeal to her party side and I couldn’t do that. She needed me to be there for her, but whenever I asked for some reciprocity she said I was guilt tripping her to doing something she couldn’t do. She said I was the type someone should fall in love with and in like with, but she didn’t love me, but I was the soft spot in her life for whenever her other friendships and relationships went sour and if I just gave it more time, she could come around, she just needed my support…
I hope this sounds dizzy, because that’s what my time was like with her. She was so, crazy, and bold, and young, and beautiful, and it was intoxicating just to be around her intense and passionate personality. But them lows were horrible. Like when I went out of my way to get her a parasol for her birthday, and she had a girls’ night out and intentionally didn’t invite me (although I was the only one who got her a gift). Like when she said she couldn’t find it in her heart to love me actively, but she found it with other girls. Like when she’d come over and want me to hold her, but got defensive if I asked her if we were going to make love (or even worse, get upset when I didn’t initiate just so she could reject me).
In the midst of all this, I branched out and started dating someone who was very special. The important thing is that these felt like dates, meaning we went out, and we shared equal parts of ourselves, romantically and emotionally. I had told C about other people I had dated in the year, and she wasn’t happy about it, nor did she want to meet anyone I had gone out with. I ran into C at a dance while I was still seeing this new girl. I was going to hang out with C the next morning and make curry for her, but then I was like, why? And I realized that following morning that I wasn’t as open for the current relationship because I was still stuck in the present. I had tried all those years to change C, or at least make her see that our friendship was worth taking as seriously as her other friendships but I couldn’t change her. And when the smoke was cleared, we didn’t have much in common, and I was getting tired of dealing with all of her issues. So I called her up and met up with her over smoothies, and broke it to her. I no longer saw the friendship as one worth investing in because she didn’t value the role I had in her life, so we couldn’t kick it anymore. Meaning, no more late night dinners, no more phone calls, no more reaching out to me to get her emotional needs met. She needed go to elsewhere to get that need addressed, perhaps by the people she spent all her other time with. She cried. I felt like a douchebag, and a few days later some of our mutual friends confirmed my new douchebag status.
That was one of the instances where I said goodbye in a place of strength, rather than a weakness. I wouldn’t have been able to continue in a healthy relationship if I was still carrying around that excess baggage of my past, still proceeding in the present. But even to this day, I still doubt if it was the right decision. It’s not like I said it because I was confident I’d get into a new relationship — I’m still single. But I knew I couldn’t start to process of being open to a good relationship until I cut the bad one off.
Now, I’m saying gooodbye more often that I normally would. I guess I”m doing this now because I want to pick how I spend my time from my values instead of fear. I went to volunteer at Food Not Bombs last Sunday, and when I told the group I work for Americorps, I was grilled because I’m a government employee (ewww!) and since they are all anarchists, my job conflicted with their beliefs. I could’ve stayed, but I value kindness, especially when you first meet someone and I found them to be judgemental and unkind to complain about my job. So I left, and I don’t think I’m going to return.
I still wonder if I am making mistakes with all these things, if I should wait a little longer. I’m still wondering if there will ever be a time when saying goodbye can come more easily. I want to say it’s difficult because I am working with a deficit or sorts, and I don’t know if I’ll ever reach the time when I’m completely fulfilled with my social and emotional needs. I’m a little sad things didn’t work out between my current roommate and I, but I’m relieved I finally found the strength to get myself out of that situation.
I should probably stop this post before it turns into a book. So there’s my goodbye (but for a little while).
Be smart. be strong. be brave. be independent. It’s one of those messages that keeps on playing in my head, perhaps because I’ve heard from so many people in my life. Teachers, parents, professionals. That damned Destiny’s Child song that became so popular my junior year of high school. And now I’m left with asking the question what is independence, and is it really such a good thing.
