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Dating Diary:
What I did on my summer vacation...
Dear Diary,
WHERE WERE WE?
It's funny how relationships work. We always hear the clichés about love, things like: love should never be easy, love takes time, love will bring you back, and so forth. (Yes, I totally stole these from song titles, but generic pop songs are very aptly named after clichés, so there's really no way around it.) It has come to be my opinion that everyone is a hopeless romantic, any way it may fall. You don't have to be buried in Harlequin novels, writing love letters and pining away until you distraughtly collapse in a field; all you need to do is have a notion of what love is, ideally. And everyone has that notion, whether they want to admit it or not.Over the summer, Bee and I celebrated our second year anniversary. I always kid with him that two years is a long time, long enough to comfortably pop out two babies. And then his eyebrow twitches.
But it is a long time. Admittedly, it's been my longest relationship to date, and that's counting all the ones where we'd break up and get back together over the course of six months. With Bee, there is no drama. And that's…nice. It's refreshing in a way that a nice shower after a hangover is refreshing. Of course, not everything is happy-go-lucky all the time, and we do have our blowouts or moments of unadulterated anger. Sometimes I'll be talking on the phone and I can tell that he's falling asleep (or reading news). Or he'll stifle his disgust at the used Kleenex that I've left on his desk (relax, it didn't go anywhere that might cause alarm). Or he'll forget that time I was attacked by a radioactive spider and thought I was going to die, and ask me to spend a weekend at the cottage. On and on it goes, and yet, here we remain.
Besides having my daily relationship adventures with Bee, I've also concentrated on others. I've despondently let go of a long friendship that caused more stress than necessary; I rebuilt old friendships that I had thought were forgotten; I've reunited with high school friends who like to remind me about that one time I got really drunk at a party and had to have my parents come get me (that was a long time ago) but who, I realize, knew me as a shy teenager and liked me as I was; and I've kept the strong ones going (hello, Michelle!). And finally, I came to recognize that people do grow, just not the way you always want them to.
I've watched the glorious evolution of relationships through friends: from crushes to new relationships, from complicated familiar relationships to anguished heartbreaks, from learning to heal to new hopes. I've been the shoulder to cry on, I've been the giddy enthusiast, I've been the voice of reason. I've seen my boss collapse from the sheer power of a broken heart, and I've seen a dear friend walk down the aisle. I've stumbled upon a twisted love triangle that left two people confused and hurt, for the exact same treatment that one has given the other. I've seen strange hook-ups that would never occur in nature, and yet they do at clubs. I've seen a break-up of a three-year love affair because he never grew into her expectations. As these relationships evolve, so do I.
Inevitably, I have encountered some complicated relationships from the past. Sometimes they are looking for closure from me, and sometimes I am haunted by the way things have played out. And sometimes we pretend like we hardly know each other and go on our merry way. Whether that's an unspoken understanding is hard to say; some things can be let go without really understanding them.
It was a couple of weeks ago, when I saw Andrew of Dating Diaries of yore, that I realized I have had way too many drunken "closure" conversations than recommended. As you might recall, Andrew was the playa who eventually hooked up with his "friend" and was never heard of again. Oh, all right. I did see Andrew and his girlfriend a couple of times since then, and she warmed up to me somewhat. They became serious and she moved in, and then they broke up and she moved out. So anyway, Andrew and I stood by the bar and began talking. Of course, he knew by this time that I was dating Bee, so it wasn't like that. What he wanted to know was if I thought that, all those years ago, he had chosen his "friend" over me.
Bloody hell.
"Well, yeah," I said, really not wanting to have this conversation. "You hooked up with her and I never heard from you again." Andrew denied it vehemently. "I didn't chose [her] over you!" he doth protested too much. "Well, okay then," I said. We admitted that at the time there was a lot of misunderstanding on both our parts, and then we stared at each other like two kids in a schoolyard might. Finally, we decided to amicably and figuratively start from scratch. But really, I'm giving you the Cliff's Notes version of this conversation. I skipped over the part where Andrew started reminiscing over the time he carried my drunken ass home, because no one should ever hear that story.
And then there was the conversation with an old friend at another bar, which I initiated. Just think of the situation with Andrew, but reverse the roles so that the friend is the one who is thinking, "Bloody hell." This relationship is a little more complicated than Andrew's relationship, and he and I were much closer and dearer to one another (but not in a ex kind of way). In all honesty, I think I just needed to hear that he was okay so I could feel better. Because people never get what they want when they think selfishly, I didn't get the big reunion that I had hoped for. Unfortunately, my timing sucked because not only was it his birthday, but he was boisterously drinking along until I showed up beside him. I was the one looking for closure. We did resolve some things, and other thoughts were finally revealed after a year of silence. But only time can tell where our friendship truly stands.
And then there was the drunken anvil. At yet another bar, on a different night, I saw an old friend and sat with him at the bar. We made small talk and tried to catch up, although I think we both knew that the time and distance between us was too far and too great to ever overcome. Eventually, the conversation led to the Devil's Spawn. Friend said that he just came from a friend's birthday, and Devil's Spawn was in attendance. Of course I knew that Devil's Spawn still spoke to this particular group of friends, and yet I was still shock. I think most of it came from the fact that Friend would even bring it up, since it was almost an unspoken rule that our relationship was so fantastically bad that it should be nixed from conversation altogether. I stuttered something incomprehensible and then managed to look like an ass by asking him why he would still want to be around Devil's Spawn (as it stood, Devil's Spawn actually owed Friend some money. As you might recall, Devil's Spawn was as deadbeat as they get. And he also talked behind Friend's back, not that Friend knows it). I broke the cardinal rule of break-ups: never badmouth an ex to friends, even if he deserves a section in an anthology - you never want to look bitter (or actually be bitter). It seemed like Friend was braced for my outburst, as he simply replied that Devil's Spawn had "changed" and was "older now." Well, yes, people do get older, but that doesn't mean they mature. Also, see comments above re: changing, but just not the way that you might want them to. I managed to regain my composure and jumped into another topic, but I was still shaken by the fact that, try as I might, I cannot simply ignore my past and hope that no one remembers.
And so, another season in my life has come and gone. I had laughs with people I never thought I'd laugh with again. I had revelations that, albeit very slow on my part, have further shaped the way I look at relationships. I have learned from friends and tried to be a better person. I have shed tears over fights, and grieved that I could not be stronger. I have apologized, and accepted apologies. I have been humble, and I have been crass. I have been sorry, and I have tried to understand. I have faced my past, and I have seen the possibilities of my future. And from where I currently stand, the grass has never looked greener. ¤ C.Ho.
Next Month: Christine shows readers her very own patented ways on how to have drunken, embarrassing and awkward conversations with past love interests.