Small Town Thoughts

Like the legend of the first humans goes, they were complete and because they became so powerful, Zeus decided to cut them in half and then make them spend their entire life looking for the other half of their souls. That’s how i feel. I don’t know how we came to be together. Separated by continents, oceans and cultures. Diana said: “come meet my awesome friend” and I walked into your office and there you were, with your handlebar mustache and your bluntness. You became everything. When you pulled me into your arms and you kissed me later that night you became everything. You are flawless in my eyes. All that you are is a perfect orchestration of traits that blend to fill every need and desire that I could ever have. Love has never been greater than this. I left because I thought Sara would be nicer to you if I was gone, I left so that you could be happy with the mother of your child. You let me leave because that way you were giving me a better life with a good man. So is it this what the stupid cliche means, the one that says that when you love someone you let them go? That when you love someone you sacrifice your happiness for their well being? Well i hate it. I wish I could just have been arrogant enough to realize that i can make you happier, that sacrifice is the dumbest thing when happiness is within grasp. I wish I had loved you just a little bit less so that I would have cared more about my happiness rather than your happiness, that i would have been selfish enough to just want you for myself.

Regrets are stupid, but I have to live with them now. And I was sure I could do it until I saw you and every bit of love that I buried into my heart came back with a force and I just thought “I can’t do this”. And then I thought about the stupid poem: “two road diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference”, that has closed the possibilities, that has taken me away from you, that stupid stupid road in the damn wood. 

I always hated love novels and love movies and love poems because i thought they were an idealistic exaggeration of feelings. But there is no exaggeration, it’s all real and it’s forever. I love you forever cause that’s the most. But forever is far too long since you are far away.  

This does not happen often, but today is one of those days when I look at myself and just see the truth. I am a fraud. I am not as intelligent or as good looking as I usually think I am. I’m probably nowhere near that. I keep thinking that one day someone will love me enough to make a fucking sacrifice for me, for our relationship to work. But it doesn’t happen. I do not want a big gesture, I just want to feel loved and cherished. I see I am still naive. 

So I am here in my office, the last days I spend here. I’m giving it all up to go and boldly explore the world for a few months, and now I’m starting to be afraid of doing it. Reluctant. I have this thing where I no longer believe in myself and my capabilities. I feel worthless and useless. Like everyone puts up with me because they are polite. I know it is not true, not completely true. 

I do not know what brought this episode, but I suspect it was the talk I had last night about father issues and abuse. Looking back, I realize not one man in my life has loved me enough to make an effort to keep the relationship working. P. was happy to break up with me, he wanted something new, A. chose the other one, L. was acting like he was more inconvenienced by the divorce rather than loosing me, H. made a victim out of himself and never even gave a sign he’d like to change something to keep me. V. was the one that loved me, obsessively so, to the point of all wrong. But I have erred him and for that I am sorry.  

Thing is, I do have father issues. He was never there, and he never proved his love, he merely declares it sometimes, but he would never really do something for me to prove his love. What I’m saying is, a guy has to be a bit better than my dad, it’s really not much to ask. I think I could be quite ok given a true chance. Or at least I hope so.

I woke up at five in the morning and headed to the observatory. It was a cloudy day, but quite warmish and we had tea and cookies, we were in good company, so we just waited and wished for the clods to go away.

And they did. 

And there it was: Venus, passing in front of the Sun. The transit was almost over, but it was truly worth seeing. There was a projection from the old telescope, you could look through the new telescope and there was another small, old telescope outside with something that looked a lot like tinfoil at the end that actually showed the very best view of the Sun. I also had my eclipse glasses with me, and at one point, J. and I were just sitting there, with the protection glasses on and looking at the Sun. 

It was a great experience, something I hope to remember all my life and make a great story out of it. 

And to make the day even more epic, tonight, we go to see Iron Sky!

To say “you had me at hello” is a cliche. It doesn’t make it less true. On April 17th you got out of your house and uttered a surprised “hello” when you saw me. That was all it took. I hadn’t seen you in years and you looked better than I remembered. What followed as just a reaffirmation of what I knew I loved about you and some details that made you even more charming. 

Your smile is just fantastic and your dimples are irresistible. Not to mention how you seemed to be a bit insecure, like I wasn’t obviously interested. The time leading up to you kissing me was just excruciating. But then you did it and it felt like I had found the fucking pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. 

I., what happened there between us is not over, and somewhere in the back of your mind, you know this is true. What we have is legendary!

I love astronomy because it humbles me.

Because I look at a cluster of galaxies and I realize my mind can not comprehend the vastness of the Universe. It is incredibly difficult for me to comprehend the amount of information and matter there is in a nebula, and nebulae are tiny parts of galaxies. Galaxies are also small parts of the Universe. Everything inside those galaxies and in between… all that great unknown… and we are tiny tiny people on the surface of a tiny planet in a tiny star system… and still, with our even tinier minds we are able to marginally grasp all the greatness of this Universe… what could ever be more beautiful?

Enjoy the annular solar eclipse this Saturday, all you lucky people living in the right places of the Earth!

Dearest I.,

You’ve done it. I am in love. 

For a few nights in a row I’ve been dreaming of I. And it’s not all innocent dreaming either. But they’re vivid and even though I don’t really get what I want/need from him, there’s always like a compromise that I have to make for us to be together, I feel like my sub-conscience is trying to tell me not to give up. That there’s still hope. I mean, either that, or I’m sporting a really huge obsession here. 

What’s quite clear is that he’s become a driving force, a motivation factor, much like N. last summer, but somehow stronger and more real. 

So after my divorce, I’ve been going out with H. We had been going out for 10 months already when I found someone better. I had been dreaming of I. for the past 13 years (that’s like half my life). 

H. was unemployed. He was kind of negative all the time, never encouraging me but emphasizing my failures. He was always quite vocal about his requirements and I never seemed good enough. He had an unhappy family situation. He never got to graduate college. But he was loyal and witty, and he was a good lover. 

I. was brilliant and funny and handsome. PhD graduate with a dream job and a bit shy. I could not want anything more. I could not ask for anything more. Plus, we had some sort of a romantic story cause we had met while I has in the 6th grade. 

So I broke it off with H. to be with I. in a long distance relationship. That didn’t quite work out because of some difficulties and I had easily come to terms with it. 

But good ol’ H. found somehow I.’s info, and wrote him a long e-mail describing our entire relationship and how I had left him and  betrayed him in the worst possible way. How I have high expectations, how much I like to take advantage of opportunities and how materialistic I am. How he had saved me from sleeping around after my divorce and how he was there for me when I needed comfort, and now I was throwing him to the trash.

I was and still am embarrassed. There is no other word. We are not 15 to take petty revenges on each other. As O. said, we have all been dumped in a bad way, but none of us ever went to this extent. 

So yeah… Thought I’d share this. Cause that’s how much it frustrates me!

But somehow, this stands to prove that sometimes we may seem to give the people we love a lot of our resources but they never seem to really get it. I never got whatever H. was offering me because he did not know how to properly communicate with me. He was always trying to be subtle, that never works for me. I need things to be expressed in a straight forward way, I know it takes away some of the mystery, but let’s just say I compensate with other things. And I never got what he was offering because he was giving something I did not need. That’s something we should always bear in mind. Cause if your best superpower is baking cookies, you might not wanna marry someone who hates sweets.  

So I’m back home. Each time I come back I have a few weeks of being depressed. I don’t like it here. This country has nothing and this town have nothing  more to give me. I do enjoy my job in the sense that I don’t dread coming to work and it gives me a lot of freedom. I do wish to finish my Master’s Degree and apply for a PhD somewhere else. But the sweet small towns of Germany with they incredible charm and ordered way of life seduce me everytime. I did not want to come back! Maybe next time I won’t! And my dear U., you made it all worthwhile!

Today, my sister quoted Willy Wonka! It was surreal and priceless! She’s great!

Yes, my sister an I have a New Year routine. We wake up, have breakfast and head to work. We turn on the tv on Deluxe Music and start cleaning the place and setting it up for the party. We fold napkins, we set up colourfull strings, we arrange tables and chairs, we put candles, start preparing aperitifs and basically have fun all this time. 

We have been doing this for a few years. 

The new year party is one of my least favourite parties because it’s somehow considered weird not to celebrate it at all, but to me it’s a stupid reason to party. So I’m more than happy to work on this occasion. 

Somehow this year it was all different. We went with our routine, the people arrived, the madness started, we had a lot of work to do. And then the fireworks from hell began (which I hate - I do believe they are too freudian to be that mainstream and I just don’t appreciate the noise - and yes, I do belive that if you look up to them, some residue will fall in your eye) so we all drank something together and kissed and went back inside to resume work/party. After only a few remained and we joined in for drinks, I remember looking at the time and thinking ”there is nowhere else I would rather be right now” - which was clearly a surprise, bt for the first time in a few years, it was a fun new year’s eve :)

Well, I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about the year that has past. Not one of my best years. But then my ex husband posted on his blog a summary of his last year (half of which we had spent together) and there was nothing there about me. I mean, I understand we divorced, but we are still close. Still good friends, no hard feelings. So then… wtf?

So after him being the most important man in my life so far, after sharing all that we have shared, after being as close as any two people can be… this is what it comes to: I’m the part of his past that he avoids talking about, I’m the awkward topic of conversation. 

I get it, the present is what is important, he has a new girlfriend, I’m happy for them. But I don’t like this pretending that our marriage never happened. Like we don’t alresdy know everything about eachother. Like I don’t know about every annoying or lovely member of his extended family.  

Anyway, my dearest L., cheers! Happy new year! May it be the best one yet!

Yes it does. But it shouldn’t be because all these celebrities “come out”. The internet is full today with news that Zachary Quinto is gay. The sad thing is that it’s not really news. He’s always been supportive of LGBT rights, and let’s face it, there aren’t many heterosexuals that care to be as supportive. So it was a bit obvious, but those that realised, it didn’t really matter for them. Cause it really does not matter. It does not change who he is. It does not make him a better or a worse actor. It’s just a simple fact about his life.

Instead of focusing our attention on who is and who is not “out of the closet” (and this expression makes us all look like Narnia wanderers) I think it would be better to focus on removing all these labels. Let our dear ones know that their sexuality does not change the fact that we love them. It doesn’t matter. All that matter is the person itself, not who that person fancies. 

I wish one day we can all talk about sexual orientation like we talk about food preferences. Nobody has ever picked on me because I love Italian food. It should be the same with my choices regarding partners.

Personally, I do not see myself as bisexual, although I have been called that. I can not say I like men in general, or women in general, because I don’t. I like certain men and certain women and it has nothing to do with their gender. I like them because of who they are, not what they are.

Anyway, kudos Zachary Quinto! What you did will help people and I admire the gesture!

So, while we were married, L. and I were dreaming of buying a house in a village close by. We had all these plans and all these ideas, until it all went to hell and we divorced.

A few months ago he bought our dream house. It’s a beautiful place! The area is amazing, the house itself is fantastic. But it’s not my house, yet it is filled with what used to be my stuff. My kitchen table, my plates and my cups, my carpet, my duvet. Except it’s not MY stuff anymore. It’s his. And now he owns a house I do not own and there’s a part of me in that house that he owns and still, I have nothing to do with it. 

What’s worse is that I see all this pictures with his extended family having barbecues there and having fun. That was MY family until recently, and now they are not. I am no longer the beloved daughter in law that always had a nice thing to say to anyone, that always remembered birthdays and anniversaries, that always had an interesting topic at hand or a pacient ear to listen. 

I do not regret divorcing, I am aware of the problems and the imposibility to surpass them, but there’s still a sense of loss that does not seem to leave me. I used to belong and now I no longer do. 

Some days are harder. 

My love Igor is back, healthy and ready to rock!

In other news, I’m dating an awesome guy I met last week. And because my life has never been simple or boring, today I’m off to see N. 

Whoever said small town life was boring?

My computer, Igor, broke down yesterday. We’ve been together for 5 years now and it really hurts to see him like that. and I was talking to my best friend, O., about how we end up actually loving inanimate objects around us. She loves very much her apartment, Phillipe. And it is a different kind of love, but it’s love nonetheless. 

Maybe a few years ago I would have been extremely sad about the Igor situation. Now I am sad about it, but I’ve gotten used to the idea that everyone I love will eventually walk away, die or power down. So I’m just focused on getting Igor to the computer hospital and giving him whatever he needs. Maybe a new hard drive, some more ram, or whatever is necessary. 

Because even if everyone walks away, dies or powers down, love transcends humanity. 

Yes, it took me quite a while to figure this out. I really do have a hand fetish. Some guys just have the prettiest hands. And I do find myself staring at them. Shamelessly. I can just imagine myself sucking on those long beautiful fingers…

Dear N.,

I spent a part of my days trying not to invest meaning in our interactions, not to see all the amazing stuff that bring us together and how out differences actually make us complete one another. I realize everything is mostly in my head. I am aware of everything that makes it impossible for us to work out. And maybe that’s why I want it so badly. 

And still, I vividly recall you asleep in my bed, your fluid movements early in the morning, your lush body after coming out of the shower, your long fingers wrapped around my favorite cup,your smile, the touch of your hand on my back. 

I wish these feelings would go away, but I the same time I do not wish for them to go away. Being in love with you gives me meaning. 

Knowing that you will never be mine adds to the whole angsty charm of it all.

Yours always,

DD

So I went wild last night and got 8 hours of sleep instead of 6 and i actually remembered my dream. It’s really hard to put into words, cause there wasn’t much action in it, it was mostly visual… but my God! what a visual it was!

So i was outside the city of ShiKahr, but it wasn’t in the desert, I would actually say the vegetation was lush. And there was this huge ant-like monster away towards the horizon that was attacking us (I’m not sure who “us” is, but I know I wasn’t alone) with something like enormous blades. So we drove fast into the city and the ant-like monster disappeared and we were walking on the streets of ShiKahr. And that’s when it became ultra visual.

Everything inside the city was intensely colored, the buildings were made from something that resembled vegetation, but was very thick and the colors would begin by being their darkest shade and then going through all shades until turning to a different color. Sometimes it looked like the vegetation was actually crystals but it still remained friendly. Everything was welcoming and friendly. 

Such a shame I had to wake up!

I do enjoy being single. I do enjoy the freedom it allows me. But on Saturdays like this I also feel the downside of being alone. It’s not that there’s nothing to do around the house, cause there’s plenty, but I feel purposeless.

I just hope Walt Whitman will be able to get me out of this state today. And a bit of propositional calculus :) One can always count on logic to spice up a lazy weekend!