Outside of the Box

Today I feel… Medvedev [current president of the Russian Federation]. I got this tremendous little number for my fridge from my ex-roomie Jen last Christmas and only a year later did I realize that my daily emotions can indeed stretch beyond ‘naughty’ and ‘fabulous’…

...yet true ‘outside of the box type of thinking’ arrived only today – just in time for New Year’s Eve – when I decided that today I feel… Kafka!

As most of my comrades already know from my previous post, I had a date scheduled for Sunday evening. And I duly went on this date; a date which was with a man. Yes, a proper date with a real man and all – thus indicating no less than that I am genuinely single now! Single people date [so I’ve heard anyway]. After this date I arrived at the conclusion that the actual date in itself is not much fun at all – mostly because you’re so nervous and have a tendency to talk about the wrong things [I did mention both of my exes at length against my better judgment on the date in question] and drink a bit too much – what is a lot of fun, however, is the morning after. You heard me right, comrades. After you’ve covered all of the trivial yet socially accepted subjects over dinner and/or drinks the evening before, after you’ve had sex, after you’ve fought over who gets most of the blanket in bed, after you’ve heard each other snore and after you’ve seen each other naked. After all of the above is where the fun really begins. When you’ve had breakfast together and still the whole day lays ahead of you with plenty of time to just get cozy with each other in the couch in front of the TV – without really paying attention to what’s on – or fooling around in bed and changing conversational topics to the more intimate, and somewhat less socially accepted. I realized that I really like this guy on the morning [or should I say ‘afternoon’?] after our official date, when I remained in his apartment long after breakfast and he allowed for me to curl up like a little cat on his chest [my favorite position! (except for the position that Annie refers to as ‘cowgirl’ – you all know what she’s referring to, I presume?)]. That day after was what made the date feel truly worth all of the trouble – worth me getting all dolled up and everything. Even though I didn’t wear anything close to the outfit that I was planning on. I couldn’t wear the boots I had wanted to wear because it is far too slippery on the streets of Gothenburg right now. Anyway. I wish a girl could just skip all of the evening before – what some would call the ‘actual’ date – and simply jump ahead to the morning after when meeting a nice man.

Okay, so I went home with a man on the first date. I spent the night at his place. Does that make me a bad person? A bad Christian? I don’t know. I don’t think so. In this particular case I feel like I deserved it; like it was something I needed and wanted. And I don’t necessarily believe having sex out of wedlock makes you a bad person, nor a bad Christian. Also I think the Bible stresses many other, more important, issues that we need to confront before even thinking about paying our attention to things like unmarried people having sex with each other. In this question I feel and think the same way as I feel and think about homosexuality – if this ‘problem’ is mentioned only a few times [like three or four times if my memory is correct] in the Bible and the Bible is a very, very long book, then it is most likely not the main issue that God is concerned with. God talks about loving your neighbor on about every single page of the Bible. I think that’s where a true Christian should put the focus of their life. The main thing we should do is loving each other. Not judging one another. Also I think the whole ‘marriage’ thing is principally cultural, not something God actually enforced on human beings. After God created Adam He made Eve – as Adam’s ‘helper’. With that said, I rest my case.

Anyway, all in all my date turned out to be a pleasant experience. Will I be seeing this man again? Who knows? We decided to meet again on Friday, but who knows what can happen between the end of the year 2009 and the beginning of the year 2010… Probably very little. Also I should brag a little bit before posting this and going to bed – this guy told me that the reason as to why he flirted with me that night when we first met was because he thought I had ‘a great body’. Yeah. I have a great body. I know this is neither the time nor the place to brag about my measurements – only hinting that they’re good, very good – but I think that since beauty is in the eyes [and the hands] of the beholder, he did a great job with making me feel very sexy. And I needed to feel sexy again. And again and again…

Reverse In Case of Emergency

What do you give to the woman [i.e. my sister Lillbubb] who has everything for Christmas? Obviously a pack of seven famous mustaches sporting the catch-phrase “Don’t be caught in public with a naked upper lip!” Here we are trying out two of them yesterday: “the square” [me] and “the sheriff” [Lillbubb].

Christmas is over, comrades. I survived the intensive holiday pretty well despite giving my brother’s girlfriend a pair of earrings for Christmas, not knowing that her ears aren’t pierced. I know I should’ve texted my brother before buying them, but then again there are plenty of things I should do that I never get around to doing and just as thinking before speaking isn’t my thing, neither is texting before purchasing. It was pretty awkward when she opened her gift. Yet she said she liked the earrings I gave her so much [they’re very beautiful and classy and also cute at the same time, so why wouldn’t she?] that she intends to get her ears pierced in a not too distant future. Well, we all know that hope dies last – as is the popular Russian expression. Christmas Eve involved so much Swedish holiday excitements for an inexperienced expat such as myself that I was exhausted by 9 pm and thus duly stumbled into bed and fell asleep already at this early hour. This sudden and strong fatigue, in addition to the nausea that’s been pestering me constantly for the past two weeks, led Mother to believe there might be not many but only one specific reason behind all of this. It seems like the sinnesfrid I got for Christmas this year was not very long-lived. Hopefully I will have solved this problem and found out the reason for my eerie condition by New Year’s Eve and thus by then be ready to receive peace of mind all over again – this time according to the much more familiar [to me] Russian tradition of giving and receiving gifts. Anyway, it is too early to panic. Way early. I’ll panic later. Reverse ONLY in case of emergency, right, comrades?

Leave that be and let’s talk about something completely different! Comrades, I think it is safe to say today that I am finally back on the market. “What market?” you might be wondering. And rightly so. Well, the market of single people, of course! The dating market, if you may. As a matter of fact, I happen to have been asked out on date tomorrow evening! Yay! When Annie and I went out that Friday, this guy flirted with me for only about 15 minutes [I didn’t even mention our little flirt in my post afterwards as I deemed our chat too brief for it to be possible for him to ask me out a few days later] and since I didn’t have my cell with me, Annie gave him her number and took his for me. Then on Monday he texted her asking her to give his number to ‘her nice friend’ [i.e. me!]. I texted him right back and on Monday we exchanged a couple of texts before he finally asked me if I’d like to have a cup of coffee with him sometime in the days after Christmas and before New Years. I said: “I’d love to have a cup of coffee with you. Pick a time and place and I’ll see you there”. I was completely leaving everything up to him, throwing the ball back in his court constantly, as I have decided to no longer be a silly fool and put myself all out there for men from previously communistic countries to simply carry off to bed, but stick to the strict rules of dating this time. The rules of dating are fine and finite; they have existed for centuries and helped many great women to get the man of their dreams – like Elizabeth Bennett who landed Mark Darcy in “Pride and Prejudice” and Elle Woods who got over her good-for-nothing-boyfriend in order to score a healthy relationship with a good-looking, young Harvard professor in “Legally Blonde 1” – just to mention a few. But the guy didn’t text me back until Christmas Eve, and then only to wish me happy holidays! Not to inform me of the time or place of our date. Mother decided right then and there that he had completely blown all his chances with me, but I decided to wait until the 26th of December to completely ‘write him off my to-do-list’, so to speak. Today he sent me a text asking if I’d go out for a drink with him tonight. But since I’m on Brännö, and the text only arrived at 4 pm, I decided to not hurry into town but let him know that tomorrow would be better for me. Yes, let him wait for it. And that’s when he told me the time and place where we’re meeting up for our official date tomorrow. Finally! The poor boy doesn’t know what he’s getting himself into – I’m going to get myself so dolled up on our date tomorrow that he’ll think he’s scored the number one prize in some competition but nobody has yet told him about it. I’ll pull out my old pair of ‘Buffy boots’ [as I like to call them], pair them with a black miniskirt, probably match these dark items with something in a lighter shade that’s both naughty and nice at the same time [I have plenty of options in mind]. I’ll make my long hair look real nice, I’ll apply my make-up perfectly and carefully – but the preparations don’t end there, comrades! I have made up my mind and I have also decided that I am not allowed to talk about the following things: a) my ex-boyfriend A.; b) my former more handsome half M.; c) my most plausible relocation to California in the fall; and d) the university in a way that makes me sound like I’m too much into higher education. Instead of talking about these things, I will ask him plenty of questions. After all, I know very little about him. I know his name and where he lives and how old he is – but that’s about it. I remember what he looks like fairly well – I remember thinking “My God, he’s tall!” when I met him, and then I was wearing high heels and it is always a good sign if you think the guy is tall when you first meet him and you’re wearing high heels because then you know the effect will be even better when you take off your shoes [hoping, of course, that such a moment will arrive eventually]. Also I remember touching his upper arm slightly, as I pretended to laugh loudly at some joke he made, and thinking to myself: “My God, he has amazing arms!”. It is always a good sign if what you mainly remember of a guy is his physical features – especially if you’re not planning on getting into a long-term relationship with him, but just to ‘have some fun’. I can’t be getting myself into anything serious right now, not after what happened with A., not before I find out where I’m going to move my collection of Dostoevsky’s works in 12 volumes next.

Today I had an almost date even though it was not really a date at all but actually just a sudden chance meeting with a nice man [quite tall, with glasses, of the age between 25 and 30] while out walking around on Brännö earlier today. We were both so moved by the beauty of nature – we both stopped in the same exact spot, looking at the sun spreading its bright rays over the sea in front of us – that we could not do anything else but comment on it to each other. It was really a wonderfully beautiful day out at the sea today. We got to talking. Then we started walking together. He was surprised to find that I’m actually a ‘local’ – I hate it when people on Brännö think I’m not ‘one of them’ just because I don’t live there anymore [but my dad does!], but as a matter of fact I grew up on that island, and even spent the first days of my life there. You could actually say that I was born on Brännö, and it wouldn’t be a lie. It wouldn’t even be stretching the truth. Not a bit. So I talked and walked with this nice man, and as we did so, we realized that we were completely wrong for each other and thus we said goodbye without exchanging phone numbers as that would not have led to anything anyway. It is nice when you can meet a man and feel instantly that this is just wrong, and to have him feel the same way. Don’t you just love it when it’s mutual, comrades?

I sure do.

So THIS Is Christmas?

Even Spock [mother’s cat] knows it is Christmas now – he realized now is the season to be jolly after meeting The Xmas Bush. See the golden матрёшка hanging in it? That’s an ornament I brought back from the Motherland [surprising? No].

In Sweden we celebrate Christmas on the 24th [I tell my students in Russia that we do this because we want to be first but I’m not sure this is actually true] and that’s already tomorrow, comrades! Merry Christmas! I haven’t celebrated Christmas at home in Gothenburg together with my family and friends since 2004. Five years is a long time to live without some thing – be it a tradition or a person. And five years is more than enough time to forget what this thing felt like, smelled like, looked like, was all about. Only tonight can I honestly say that I am beginning to remember what Christmas is really like. After everything seems to have been done – plenty of gifts have been purchased [with tired feet and an exhausted credit card as on-the-side results], large quantities of food and alcohol has also been bought and brought home to my Mother’s, all of the apartment has been cleaned and also decorated with all things red and sparkly [in the homey and cozy kind of way] – it finally feels like the holiday has begun!

Tomorrow I’ll start celebrating the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ [son of God!] early in the morning together with Katharina – morning mass will start already at 8 am, so I better be off to bed soon and get some sleep before that. Then the day will continue to involve food, alcohol, Mother, Spock, my brother and my brother’s girlfriend – all gathered around The Xmas Bush with glittering eyes and tender smiles [from drinking and eating too much].

And I’ve already received two of the best Christmas gifts this year. First, A. dumped me and thus [unconsciously] blessed me with my much longed and craved for sinnesfrid [peace of mind]. Secondly, I received an e-mail from Berkeley yesterday that said my “application is complete”. Now I’m not going to make a list of all of the many things that I had to gather together over the past 18 months in order to make my application a complete one, as I am sure that most of the readers of my blog are already familiar with this kind of process. Probably many of you are already doctors of this or that. And to that I say – rock on! Or something like it.

Right now I am all wrapped up in a feeling of certainty. I am certain right now that I am going to be okay. Yeah. I’m getting over and back and moving ahead.

White

Will it be a white Christmas this year in Gothenburg? [This picture was taken walking through Mölndal this morning, though…]

Either going out to bars to drink and clubs to dance is not my thing, or I’m not ready yet. Simply not ready yet to be exposed to large crowds of desperate men under the influence so soon after being dumped. On Friday I went out with Annie. We wore matching tight tops with deeply plunging décolleté and put on excessive eye shadow in glittery, pearly hues. We looked good. We smelled good. We wore black leather high-heeled boots. Even though I had fun being out together with her – it was the most fun before we went out on Friday evening and after on Saturday afternoon when we just hung out at her place for hours – I didn’t like it at all. Maybe I’m simply not ‘in that place’ yet. Maybe I am the kind of person that will never ‘be in that place’. In my opinion, bars are dreary places filled with unsightly and drunk people that are too stupid to keep up an informed conversation, but this you don’t find out until the morning after since the music is too loud for you to have an informed conversation anyway [let alone hear what the other person is saying at all]. At Diamond Dogs Annie and I tried to hook up with some nice-looking young men and thus started talking to them. But I should’ve known it wasn’t going anywhere when the guy grabbing a hold of my ass told me he’s 25 years old and works for Elgiganten. Okay, so often I try to be an open-minded person and even friendly to folks from all walks of life, but come on! Come on! One of these days I’m going to be a professor of Russian literature; I can’t be wasting my time like this. Interesting enough – and just because life is intolerably ironic – he told me he had recently broken up with his Hungarian girlfriend. “Well, she’s actually from Transylvania,” he said. And that’s when I almost choked on my Black Russian: “What do you know, I just got dumped by a Hungarian from Transylvania!” “It is a small world,” he smiled. I did not: “Yeah, I’m getting claustrophobic alright… Did he pull the ‘say I love you and then take it back’ thing Hungarians always do?” Then the guy gave me a strange look, shook his head and let me know it was time to move on to the next by saying: “What?… I don’t think that’s actually a thing.”

The evening out in Gothenburg taught the following about life: a) because I’ve lost my dialect due to living abroad for so long people in this town don’t believe that I was born here and keep asking me: “But where are you from?” and I’m all like: “What do you mean? I was born here!” Then there’s this awkward silence after which I have to confess to living in Russia and being an MA student and a university teacher of Swedish and intellectually challenging enough to make it almost impossible for any man without a PhD to get an erection; b) a surprisingly big part of the male population of the Earth consists of bad kissers; c) I prefer spending my Friday nights with a good book [writing or reading] on my own or in good company of a few close friends and a bottle of red wine – of which I am going to stop being ashamed right now.

Yesterday was Sunday and in the evening of that day my Mother, my sister Lillbubb and I went to see Eddie Izzard in Scandinavium. The show was amazing! What was not so amazing about the evening – having nothing to do with Eddie at all, who was splendid – was the fact that A. was also present. And that we ended up getting better seats only three rows behind him and his friends. So I was forced to watch his curly head of hair from behind for almost two hours – actually, the whole time I wasn’t looking at him. Thankfully! Before the show we said hello to each other – he hugged me. After the show we said goodbye – he hugged me again. Then about an hour or so later he texted me with something like ‘I’m sorry for being so slow and all, but I just don’t know what to say’. To this I answered: “What is there left to say anyway? I think every time we talk it will be exactly like this: J: I want you. A: I don’t want you! Get away from me, you horrible woman! J: Okay then. It was worth one last try. A: Aight! See you around! *J wants to shake hands but A insists on hugging just to rub in what she can’t have*” To this he answered: “Okay, I’m not going to hug you anymore when we see each other. Even though that’s not what I meant.” I wanted to text him right back with the following message of “I don’t think we’ll ever see each other again”, but I didn’t because I don’t want to sink to his low level and he’s in my head nonstop anyway right now and he’s all I think about but I don’t want HIM to know this because he’s just not a very nice person and I don’t like him at all, or at least I try to tell myself that I don’t like him anymore, even though I must admit to myself that I still love him and that I would still jump in a cab in the middle of the night if he was to text me: “Baby, I want you back. Come to my bed now!”

God, I never thought having your heart broken would feel just like being sick to your stomach. I don’t have an appetite at all. It constantly feels like I’m about to throw up. I feel like the world’s most unattractive person. Whenever I look at myself in the mirror I’m surprised to find that I still look exactly like I looked before when I was with him and he kept telling me ‘You are so beautiful!’, because that’s not at all what I feel like right now. I feel repulsive and rejected and nauseous all of the time right now. I feel bloated and my face is so angry because I almost never smile nowadays but how could I smile when I keep listening to “Try Sleeping with a Broken Heart” from Alicia Keys’ new album because I put it on repeat and it is all I want to hear right now because so many other of the songs on my iPod are love songs that I used to listen to and think about him at the same time and – obviously! – I can’t be doing that anymore because I do not want to be one of those distressingly sad people who remain in the past clinging to an eternity they never actually got even so much as a lousy preview of.

Right now I expect the closest monastery to call me up sometime in the spring and say: “Hey there! How’s it going? Well, we’ve noticed that, you know, even though you’ve had relationships with men and stuff, you’ve never seemed to make them actually work and you’ve never truly pulled one of them off for real, and also we know you to be a devout Christian and so perhaps it is time for you to stop kidding yourself around and join our ranks? We’ve got an opening. You can come already on Monday to start devoting your life to Jesus Christ instead. Now that’s a man that’ll never say He loves you just to take it back a couple of days later. Just tell us you’ll think about, okay?”

Comrades, I know; I’m pathetic! It is almost Christmas already and all I can do is go over these ridiculous things in my head that I’ll never put in a poem – mostly because what I’m feeling right now would make for nothing but an abysmally annoyed poem far too long for anyone to ever finish reading it, most of all the person it is directed at and then what’s the point, really? – or even write in a letter and send to A. and finally get on with my life. Although I know someday I’ll have to put down in writing things like ‘I was even okay with your man boobs!’ or ‘to me you weren’t just some guy; I saw you as the father of my five adorable and academically accomplished sons and the one I’d spend all of this life with despite the fact that you sometimes make those weird sounds, that I think you have poor hygiene and drink too much’. Also he studied four years in the gymnasium [who DOES that?!] and also a year at an Folkhögskola [clearly, something’s not right with the boy’s mind] and is a little too into ‘believing’ for someone who claims to be an atheist. The first time he told me he was in love with me he said: “I believe I’m in love with you”. Then he said: “I believe I love you”. And when he dumped me he ended things with claiming: “I believe this is the best for the both of us”. To this Katharina said: “Believe is something you do in church!”

Okay, so that joke may not work in any other language than Swedish… But my point is – that I don’t really have a point at all. I’m just not in a good place at the moment. Next year I’m going to be 25 and single and most likely a PhD student somewhere in the world while secretly dreaming of getting married to some nice guy and have his babies and be a stay-at-home mom instead. Don’t tell anyone, comrades. This longing for babies is embarrassing. But even more embarrassing is the longing for marriage. I must have gone mad in this process of heart-breakage. That or it was always in me – only to be brought out in times of crisis.

Whatever. Now I’m going to do some Christmas shopping, meet with my friends, exchange gifts, drink coffee and eat a muffin. Pepparkaksmuffins may be the only reason as to why I’m proud to be Swedish.

Sweden on Shuffle

On the island of Brännö [located in Gothenburg’s southern archipelago] people pass by my father’s house thinking on the hill in front of it stands a sleigh covered with Christmas lights. A closer look reveals that it is as a matter of fact nothing but a good ol’ bench.

Through the years I’ve made a habit of regarding my eastern existence as ‘Russia on Random’. Now I could probably make a matching point of describing my current life as ‘Sweden on Shuffle’. Sweden’s not really shuffling at all, but I’m shuffling in Sweden and that’s what matters. The best choice I made for the new year of 2010 was leaving Facebook [well, since you’re not officially allowed to leave that site I guess the appropriate way of naming my action would be ‘deactivated my account’]. Now I wake up to 90% less mails in my inbox every day, something that made me feel a miserable person at first, until I came to realize it as yet another blessing from my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. During Wednesday I was engaged in such an intensive e-mail dialogue with the guy editing my new article – which will be published in Göteborgs Posten [Gothenburg Post] on January 3rd – that I came to suspect that he was flirting with me. And since I made the embarrassing mistake of not realizing that a guy was flirting with me in August – yet I gave him my number anyway and was then surprised, not to say shocked, when he called me up and asked me out – I was not intended on repeating blunders of the past. When he suddenly wrote to me with a request from our chief editor to go bowling with them on Thursday afternoon I thought he was joking, simply pulling my leg. I asked Katharina what she thought I should do. She said I should go, if only to get out of the library where I’ve been spending my days in utter loneliness ever since A. thought things over and decided that it is okay to say [at least in Hungarian] “I love you” to someone and then take it back. So yesterday I bowled for the first time since August 2007 together with three older Swedish gentlemen with receding hairlines. And the strangest thing of it all was that not only was it fun, but I liked it too, even though it was obvious that the guy had not been flirting with me at all. It didn’t matter though. And as always after meeting my editor, also yesterday I received a promise from him of more publications in the future and more money. He even told me that I’ll get paid for the January article before Christmas. Every day there is a small happiness.

After bowling I felt suddenly spontaneous and thus hopped on the first tram to arrive at the central station, which turned out to be number 11 to Saltholmen. I figured that it was a sign and that I was meant to go to Brännö to visit my father this evening. I tried to call him on my way out to his house and notify him of my imminent arrival, but as always he had left his cell at home and was unreachable. But this didn’t stop me – a sign is after all a sign, even if it is brought to you by Västtrafik – and I got on the boat anyway. That’s when my father showed up, and together we went to Brännö for glögg and pepparkakor before lasagna and red wine. My father drove me back to the mainland in his own boat, after saving the life of a cat that had got stuck on the ice. Sometimes my dad can be such a kind person, and such a small-town hero in disguise! Arriving back in the city center, I decided once again to leave my life up to chance and be aware of direct, concrete signs from God. Instead of getting off the tram where I got on – at the central station – I got off a few stops earlier and walked to a tram stop where both tram number 4 home to Katharina and tram number 5 home to A. pass through. I was a little bit tipsy from the glögg and the wine and thought that I would get on whichever tram arrived first at the stop; if it be a 5, then I’d go straight to A.’s place and say stupid things like I’ll get a breast reduction to match his A-cup ideal and fall down on my knees and beg him to try and love me. God, however, had something entirely different in mind. At the bus stop I ran into – wait for it! – Peter, my mom’s cousin with whom I stayed when I was in Prague in February earlier this year. He was waiting for the bus together with a friend, only in town for a few days and flying back to Czech Republic first thing the following morning. And to believe we met on the bus stop at 10 p.m.! It was a great surprise to run into him there – of all places and of all people – and not only was it nice to talk to him for a while, but also nice to know that God is willing to go through all that trouble just to stop me from humiliating myself in front of a man that obviously will never love me nor my D-cup.

Tonight I’m going to go out dancing for the first time since Saint Paul finished his famous collection of correspondence. Okay, so I’m exaggerating a bit. But it feels like it since I haven’t gone out to dance and meet cute boys in a long, long while. Now I’m single, and so is my BFF Annie, and we’re both equally hot and equally deranged [sorry Annie, but it’s true... that IS how we roll!] – all of the above is nothing but a promise of a rocking Friday night.

2009 – The Worst Year EVER!

How can a girl prove to herself [and to the world!] that she’s ready to get over that [wonderful and wonderfully hairy] Hungarian man? By buying a brand new pair of knee-high lace-up black leather boots to move on in, of course!

The year 2009 was really the worst year EVER. For me, at least - I’m not about to jump to conclusions and make assumptions on behalf of all people, my lovely comrades. This year began badly and sadly for me; now it will end in pretty much the same bad and sad way. 2009 began with me on antibiotics [thus forced to remain sober on New Year’s Eve] and freshly out of a relationship. Now the year is about to end almost in the exact same way: with me recently off antibiotics and freshly out of another relationship. Nothing of particular interest happened in the year of 2009, except that I visited Prague twice, published a novel in Russian in Siberia and traveled in the footsteps of Shalamov to the northern Urals… Okay, so the year 2009 wasn’t all bad – it was good academically and professionally, at least. 2009 started with me receiving my B.A. in Russian from Gothenburg University and continued with me receiving the highest grades possible in all M.A. courses at Ural State. During 2009 I published more academic articles than ever before in my life and held more classes in Swedish than ever before in my life. Yet personally this year was a true disaster: I spent the first six months getting over my former more handsome half M., then I spent two months being cynic and bitter about men and love and relationships, after which I met A. and enjoyed a three month long-distance love affair with him that led to nothing. Well, not really nothing – in our relationship I learned two important lessons about myself: 1) I think chest hair is the sexiest thing on men’s bodies [perhaps I should start dating men from Arabic countries?]; and 2) I am ready to love and capable of loving another human being. Both these lessons I consider to be of equal importance.

So here I am: a whole year older and yet it feels like everything is the same as it was a year ago. I know, I’m overly generalizing things and probably being bitter and cynic all over again. Right now all I can and do wish for is that 2010 will be different. I don’t know anything about 2010. I don’t even know in what country I’ll spend the second half of it. Or what I’ll be doing, or whom I’ll meet. All I can do is hope that 2010 will bring me many good things. Right now I’m not making any plans, I’m not counting down the days to anything – not even to Christmas… I’m living right here, right now.

As a preparation for the new year of 2010, I bought a cute little red Moleskine calendar for 2010. I kind of like looking through its empty pages, imagining all these days that still lay ahead of me untouched, unremembered, unlived… Buying a brand new calendar is a good way of declaring that everything from now on will be [if not differently then at least] new.

Yesterday I spent a couple of hours in the university library finishing the essay that I later in the evening finally sent off to Berkeley as my ‘writing sample’. After a while I felt hungry and thus went to have a late lunch in the university canteen, where I suddenly heard a very familiar voice coming from across the room – it was indeed the unmistakable Stockholm dialect of my darling professor M.! He also noticed me and waved for me to come join him and another professor at their table. When this other old man had left, M. and I remained there alone together in conversation. I rebuked M. for not yet sending his letter of recommendation about me to Berkeley, especially since the deadline is almost here already – on December 17th. “I’m a 100% sure of that I want to go Berkeley now,” I said. “I don’t want to move back here anymore.” He asked me why. “The Hungarian dumped me,” I answered. He was shocked, remaining silent and just looking at me with sad eyes for a while before saying: “But no man is allowed to dump you!” Apparently, this memo did not reach Hungary. Later we went up to his office – now only an empty shell of what had once been the safe place to which I could return once every six months for four years – and sent the letter of recommendation together online. It was only a few clicks away from being submitted anyway. “I can’t work the computer, since after all, I’m an old humanist,” M. smiled. “This may be the only reason why I’m glad to belong to my generation,” I countered.

My Tuesday was finished off with me making a spur of the moment choice to go home to my mom’s, see my sister Lillbubb, drink wine, eat chocolate and watch a Christmas movie that my mother claims “has Christian content” but I disagree. In my opinion it has “contents of Christian culture”. Mother says you can’t remove culture from Christianity, whereas I’d like to have less culture in my Christianity, but that’s a whole other discussion.

Advent

Celebrating 3rd Advent yesterday with Katharina [my wonderful friend who greeted me with open arms and allowed me to live with her after I was forced to leave A.’s tiny attic] in an untraditional yet grand way: with Spanish wine and Russian chocolate…

Yesterday I met A. for the last time – maybe not forever, but for a long while. I had forgotten some things at his place when I left hastily in a cab in the middle of Thursday night, and thus on Saturday I asked him in an e-mail to give them back to me. He answered me by way of a text message – ironically, this was the way we always communicated when we were enjoying a long-distance relationship for 83 days: I e-mailed him, he answered by texting me. We met at Korsvägen. Even though I arrived there early, and even put on my glasses, thinking I would notice him approaching already from afar; he arrived suddenly, and suddenly he was standing in front of me, handing me a bag of my stuff. We sat down. We asked each other some questions that had obvious answers… I asked him: “Was it all the pink?” His face broke into a smile, and he slowly shook his head: “No, it wasn’t the pink at all.” Then I told him: “I was ready to give everything this time. I was ready to give you my all.” He looked at me and said: “And so was I.” And that was the moment. That was the moment when I saw in his eyes that none of my anger was justified anymore. That was the moment when I knew that he had never meant it when he said “I think you should loose some weight” or “I’m not attracted to you anymore”. That was the moment when I saw in his eyes that he was still the same man I had fallen in love with in September, the same man I had shared these beautiful three months of blissful intimacy with, the same man that I still love despite the fact that he does not love me back. That was the moment when I realized that in his eyes, to him, I’m still beautiful. I needed to see that. And I needed to hear from him that all of what we had shared had been real. That it hadn’t been a game at all. It had been exactly what I had felt, and what I’m still feeling, even though for him that feeling has already left. But it doesn’t mean that he never felt it. Because he did. Anger won’t heal my hurt and disappointment after all. Yesterday I realized that he is just as hurt and disappointed as I am, and ironically by the very same thing – that he can’t love me.

Every morning I wake up and check my phone for a text message from him that will never come. For three months I received at least one text message a day from him. It was easy to get used to, it is hard to get unused to. I may already have changed my phone’s text message signal [from Katy Perry’s “This was never the way I planned, not my intention…” to the nerdy and neutral intro to “Uptown Girl”] but that doesn’t mean I’m not still waiting. Despite knowing very well that it will never come.

Just like I counted down the days from the 5th of October – the day I bought flight tickets back to Sweden and we officially changed our statuses to ‘in a relationship’ on Facebook – waiting for a future that never came.

When we said goodbye yesterday I gave him my hand to shake, but he opened up his embrace for one last hug. So I hugged him. Never shook his hand. Then I walked away, not turning around to see whether or not his eyes followed me. I didn’t need see that. I have enough hurt left inside of me, enough pain that comes from constantly remembering our last kiss as I close my eyes – the kiss that made me realize he does not love me. Not because it was bad kiss, but because it was the kind of kiss I have always used whenever I wanted to end an argument with a boyfriend in the past. In the past this kind of kiss always worked. It always won my other boyfriends over, it always closed the case, it was the sure way of going from fighting to making love. The reason why this kind of kiss worked with my other boyfriends was because they all loved me. I may not have loved all of them back, but God, when I think about it, I come to understand that I’ve been very loved in my life. I’ve been blessed with not only the love of many wonderful men, but also with love from amazing friends and a crazy, but warm family. When my life fell apart and was scattered in pieces on Thursday, all of my friends and family stood by me, helped me, comforted me, held my hand, supported me. The way they showed me their love and compassion reminded me of one important thing that no one should ever forget: you never loose yourself when you loose someone else.

Four times in my life have I told a man the three words. Every time I have ever said it, I have done so because I have meant it to last forever. The three words have for me always come with an invitation, with a permission for this man to remain in my life forever. But of course nobody really ever says “I love you” as a spur of the moment kind of thing. I know. And I know you also know this, comrades. The first time I said it I was only seventeen. And ironically enough, that was to the same man that I had just spent three hours drinking coffee with on Thursday and the very same man that hugged before I jumped on the tram and went ‘home’ to A. for an evening of hurtful revelations. Ironically enough, I had not met nor spoken to this man for three years before last Thursday. Life can be so ironic at times. Who would’ve thought that being forced to let go of a new thing would bring back something old? I sure hadn’t. When I received an e-mail from him after I was released from pneumonia and simultaneously also from the hospital, I was very surprised, didn’t know what this would bring to my life, if I really needed him in my life again, but I answered anyway. When I told him those three words at seventeen I invited him to always be a part of my life – maybe at seventeen this was not a conscious choice on my part, but now it’s a little too late to take it back. Taking back such words is not how I roll [if I would still have been angry with A. today – but I’m not – I would have called taking back the three words “doing it Hungarian style”]. The second time I said “I love you” to a man I don’t really remember, yet I remember the man very well [he’s impossible to forget!]. It happened in such a way that the feeling came long before the three words, and when they were finally spoken it was so natural that I never even questioned if they were appropriate or not. This is man that I’ve never been in a relationship with, and I’ve never even been anywhere near of calling him my boyfriend. Yet we’ve enjoyed great intimacy – both physically and emotionally – occasionally through the years following our experience of living next door to each in Siberia when I was but nineteen years old. The third time I said it was to my former more handsome half M., and now I can’t really recall exactly when or where. But I know the words were spoken many times between us, and that the feeling remains within me still, yet without any tint or hint of ‘being in love’ anymore. Now only love remains… Ironically enough, it was A. that helped me with that – yet he didn’t know it – his kind personality and his inspiring influence on me and on my life and on my personality helped me get over my two years together with M., to finally move on and be able to form a healthy friendship with him. Now if that’s not ironic, then I don’t know what is!

Yeah, I know what it looks like – like I’ve got a lot of experiences with men and love and relationships. And that these experiences should be more than capable of helping me get through this rough time, get over the Hungarian musician that WAS my life for three months. But the thing is that up until Thursday I had only been with men who loved me. Up until the 10th of December 2009 I had never been with a man that didn’t love me back. Or even loved me when I didn’t love them. Yet the more I think about it, the more I come to realize that this is not the biggest issue for me in this after all. The biggest issue for me is that I lived in a future that never came, for a dream that never became true, anticipating a life that I know I will never lead. I prayed for a man that never prayed for me. I guess it sounds like a cliché, but I’m afraid that in my case right now it is so true – I lost what I never had.

And that’s why I need to mourn now. I need to feel the hurt, feel the pain, but only piece by piece, Lord, not chunk by chunk. Go easy on me, Jesus. I can’t handle more than taking it sip by sip, I’m not ready to swallow this gulp by gulp.

Last night I tried to imagine the first chapter of my next novel – a completely new novel that only just came to me – and it will begin with a woman on her way home to her man and knowing as she goes that this is the last time she will ever walk this way. Yet she doesn’t know what the feeling means, she does not understand what she’s feeling, yet she knows she’s trying to take everything around her in as if it was the very last time. As if she’s looking at everything and saying goodbye at the same time, without knowing that’s what the strange feeling in her stomach is. That is exactly what it turns out to be: the very last time she ever came home to him. Sometimes you just know, without even knowing. “Sometimes you can feel the future – not coming, but slipping away…” – that could be the first line of my next novel.

Yet last night I couldn’t do it. Thinking about it only brought me to tears. It is still too close to home. Imagining this beginning, I tried to imagine the woman and the man, yet all I could see when I closed my eyes was me – alone on the tram that Thursday evening, feeling my future slipping away… I saw myself coming home to him and finding his door locked for the very first time. I didn’t even think about it then, but now I understand it. Sometimes all the signs are there, right in front of your eyes, but instead of seeing them, you make yourself blind. It is no wonder almost every language in the world has the saying “Love is blind” – because it really is.

Interlude

This too feels like falling,

except not in –

not in love –

but down, down, down

without anything below

to crash into,
nothing underneath

to catch me now,

no visible ground

to land against –

it is just a fall

so all

I can do is

close my eyes

reach the edge

step right out

take the plunge

and

fall, fall, fall…

*

Operation: Domestication failed. Or perhaps it would be better to say that it was terminated, that it was cancelled, killed in the bud, suffocated to death in its very cradle, or – why not? – that it was smashed into tiny pieces scattered all around my life by Attila Bokor's guitar. I no longer have any ‘awesome boyfriend’. I am not all surrounded by everything Hungarian anymore. Most certainly am I no longer ‘wrapped up like a ribbon with a bow on it’ for him. Never again will I wake up to his wonderful hairy chest again [that said doesn’t mean I won’t be waking up to the lovely sight of some other man’s beautiful hairy chest some day in the future] and never will I listen to his voice again. How did this happen? How could this happen? Why did this happen? Did this really happen? To me? Last night? After less than [or perhaps exactly] one week together in a small attic in Gothenburg, Sweden, after having known each other for three months and five days, after having had a relationship on Facebook since the 5th of October, after having kept this relationship alive and even made the feeling grow stronger and stronger during 83 days apart it is over.

And now I am… – the dreadful word comes up again and back again and there’s no escaping it this time either – …single.

It really did happen. And it really did happen to me. Last night it really did happen to me. Last night I confronted him about a comment he had done about me on Wednesday evening, a comment that in itself is not worthy to be mentioned here, but hurt me greatly nevertheless, leaving me angry with him as I went to bed afterwards and still angry when I woke up. So I confronted him about it as soon as I got ‘home’ [i.e. to his place] and he said he felt stupid for saying it, but he didn’t take it back. He didn’t say ‘I didn’t mean that, I love you just the way you are’. No. Instead he directs our conversation in a different, rather unforeseen direction and tells that he doesn’t love me. But before telling me this, he tells me that he sometimes feels ‘nothing’ for me. When I heard this everything inside of me broke, it felt as if I was left without anything to hold onto, with nothing to save me or hold me or even bring me back. Bring us back – to where we had been before. But maybe we were never even there? Maybe I was the only one there? And he told me on Wednesday night that it feels like I’m not ‘always being honest with him’, and then a day later it turns out that his feelings for me went cold almost as soon as I got off the plane and stopped being this two-dimensional girlfriend he had in Russia and became a warm body in his room that wore far too much pink. He told me he doesn’t like pink. I have everything in pink. I think pink is the best color invented. And to think that I even thought of changing for him! To change myself! The thing is that I’ve changed so much during this fall. I’ve given up myself to be more like the way I thought he liked me to be piece by piece and here I am – wearing boots he probably never even noticed and I don’t think are really that cute after all… After everything I’ve done. After all the time I’ve spent on him, after all the emotions I’ve spent on him, after all the money I’ve spent on him, after all the ways I changed my life so that we could have this time together in Sweden to ‘figure things out’. Yeah, great idea.

After every thing and every way that I tried and I tried, Lord knows how I tried. Yet I fell short. I wasn’t what he had ‘thought I would be’. And that he’s not ‘attracted to me anymore’. When I cried he hugged me, and then when he cried I dried his tears with my kisses and then he says: “If I kissed you right now I would be lying to you because I don’t mean it”. That’s just great. Last night he has the nerve to tell me that he feels like an ‘idiot’ for telling me ‘this’ since I’ve done nothing but ‘to show him love and kindness and warmth’. That’s right. He’s received love from me in a way that no other man ever has before. I’ve never loved anyone like I loved him, I’ve never gone all into any relationship before, but I went all into this one. I gave him every bloody little thing a man can wish to receive from a woman. I loved him and I kissed him and I hugged him and I made the bed, did the dishes, cooked and even wanted to clean his room for him. I bought food and wine for us and never told him anything I didn’t think he’d like to hear because not only do I love him, but I also respect him. When he went to fast for me, I kept right up with him because I wanted this. I was ready for this. I was ready to let someone in, finally I was ready to open myself up entirely and be in a mature relationship. I was ready to accept another human being just for what that person is, to allow them to come into my life, to be a part of what I do, of who I am, to share my life with someone. I was ready. I am still ready. I wasn’t scared….

Okay, so yesterday I was a bit scared. I was scared because his comment about me [or more exactly: my body] hurt me and I don’t want to be hurt ever again by someone I love. I’ve been there before and I’m not going to let it happen again. Because if you don’t like the person with just as they are, then that’s a sure sign you’re probably meant to be someone else. After all, you can never change another person, and on this planet of ours there’s plenty of folks to go around. If you’re not content with what you’ve got, then call it a day and move on. And I guess that’s what he did last night. I suppose he got scared. I suppose he created another vision of me during the 83 days that we were apart, and that in the end, he was never in love with ME, but in the person he thought I was. I was never that person. I am only me.

Right now it hurts badly. It hurts a lot. But I’m going to get out of this. I’ve deactivated my Facebook-account, closed my MySpace-account, deleted him from my MSN, from Skype, and erased his number from my phone. Also I’ve deleted all of his songs both from my iTunes and my iPod. This feels good. A new, fresh start. I’m not going to erase the pictures of him, though. I don’t know why. I don’t think I’ll ever look at them again. Maybe one day.

Now I have one request left, comrades. I would like to have every comrade’s uttermost honest and devout prayer that Berkeley will accept me to gradschool in early February. Thank you.

What was this? These three months and five days since he entered into my life? Let’s put it in musical terms since he’s a musician after all – this was an interlude. That’s all. An interlude that right now sounds like I’m stuck falling down a cliff without anything to catch me when I land, but I’m going to listen to this interlude until it’s done. For as long as I need. Until I’ve got my feet back on solid ground.

Domestication

Picture taken during last night’s concert with my boyfriend’s band BOA in Gothenburg, Sweden. From the left: my awesome boyfriend, his cousin and his brother. Sitting next to me during the concert was my best buddy Annelie. Needless to say – yet I’ll say it anyway – it was a splendid Sunday spent together!

Here we go, comrades, here I come, comrades, and here I am, comrades: back in Sweden! Once again! After a terrible, awful, haunting experience flying Finnair on Friday with from Yekat via Helsinki to Gothenburg – which involved getting stuck for seven hours in Finland after my flight got cancelled and having my bag arrive only on Sunday morning – I am officially back in the same country where I was once born. I’ve been back many, many times before while living in Russia. Of course. But this time it is different than all the other times before. Why? Currently I’m living with my boyfriend. My first two days here in Gothenburg I lived in a Transylvanian collective [adding to my Hungarian also his brother and his cousins, members of the band BOA], but now we’re living all on our own. This is exciting! This is my first try at domestication. Keep reading and I’ll keep you posted on how things proceed.

Also I’ve decided that next year – the year of 2010 – will involve more Jesus for me. After contemplating my life while getting stuck in Finland for a day, I came to the conclusion that I do not get enough of Jesus in my daily life. So there’s my new year’s resolution: more Jesus!