Leaving it behind

Our friend BP stopped by just after my study group left one night. He came into my room where I was putting the finishing touches on the homework set we had just finished and began to talk, "I was downstairs at PJ's just now. I came by because I wanted to talk to him, but his girlfriend Lara came by a few minutes after I did."


Hearing Lara's name still hurt a bit but, not wanting to BP to catch on, I murmured agreeably.

"She comes in and plops down in the chair that PJ was sitting in. The whole time I was trying to talk him, she is sitting on top of him and touching him. Doesn't he know how much that bothers me since my break up? I don't want to see that."

Mentally I'm thinking, "I don't want to hear this. Can't he tell how much this is hurting me?", but now BP is on a roll venting and all I can do is try to partially tune him out. My lack of response finally had its desired effect when BP left, seemingly relieved at having told someone who understood how tortured he felt and seemingly oblivious to the pain he had just pushed onto me.


I sat on the floor of my room, surrounded by a haze of depression and emotional pain. My friend from across the hall came over with her copy of our homework and settled down to work, but I couldn't keep my focus on my textbook. I wanted to be smaller somehow and protected from all this pain. Without saying a word I got up from the floor and went into the bathroom. I left the lights off, feeling safer in the pitch dark room, and went into the far corner of the shower stall where I sat with my arms around my raised knees.


At first it was difficult to quiet my rioting thoughts and I was afraid of someone coming in to find me. What would they think of me hiding in a completely dark shower stall? But after a few minutes my body began to adopt the quiet of the room and I felt some peace. The pain was still there but I didn't feel so completely overwhelmed by it.


The door opened and I braced for discovery. My roommate, BLB, turned on the light and said my name. Thank goodness it was that friend, someone I felt safe revealing my weakness and pain to. I responded and she opened the door to the shower area. She gave me a hand getting up off the cool tile floor and with just a few words I followed her out, leaving most of my pain behind.

Weird

Is it weird that after F and I finally had our talk about religion, the person I really wanted to talk to about it was PJ?

When I told him about our conversation, now a couple of weeks removed, PJ asked if it would be weird for him to offer his help.

And the weirdest thing was that it wasn't weird at all to discuss that topic with him.

Symbols

The instructor's shirt had the top button undone and through the open collar a thin gold chain and heavy cross shone against his dark chest hair.

Seeing this, I vividly remembered pushing the neckline of PJ's t-shirt aside with my fingers, my nails lightly scraping over his golden skin and sliding through his coarse chest hair and along his angular collarbone. I slid my index finger under the heavy gold chain that always hung around his neck, tracing over the smooth skin that the chain normally rested on, slowing when I got to the large Star of David pendant. As the pendant flopped over my finger, my stomach tightened.

I wondered whether it was a gift upon his Bar Mitzvah or graduation, but, symptomatic of our communication issues, I never asked. Just as I never asked whether our religious differences would keep us from having a future together.

The right way

With both my Dad and Lisa's parents here, I asked Lisa to join me on a walk through Watson's Bay (which was the site of our first walk together last December). We reminisced about our first date, how much we've grown together, and how much we're looking forward to our future together. We then sat, overlooking Sydney's inner harbour, and with the sun setting beside us, and a gentle wind blowing across our faces, I got down on one knee, and asked Lisa to marry me.

The best part is...she said yes!!!

PJ proposed the right way. Lisa wasn't surprised--they've been shopping for a ring together. He chose a setting that had personal meaning to them and enabled them to feel alone, even in a public place. He even managed to statisfy my traditional side with the mention of their parents being in the city, all while conforming to stereotypic romantic ideals.

Consider this a primer on how to do it the right way.

Postscript

But while writing this entry, the thought popped into my head unbidden: if that was his perfect proposal to me, he would've knelt down alongside a trail at Forest Park, the site of our first walk and first date.

Bliss

We sat companionably in silence as we enjoyed our Sunday night ritual. You were reading in one armchair as I sat also reading in the other, just across the small end table from you. Slightly hunched over the book in my lap as I sat sideways in my chair, the wide neckline of my sweater gapped away from neck and back. You stretched an arm across the table, laying your fingers over the top of my shoulder and lightly rubbing your thumb in a circle against my spine.

I lowered my head a little further, trying to encourage you. If I were a cat I would’ve purred but with my roommates in the common room with us, I was too shy to tell you that I was enjoying it and I knew I would break the contact if I turned my head to smile at you.

After just a couple enjoyable minutes, you pulled your arm away and the silence between us continued--the one moment of bliss better for never being analyzed or discussed.

Growing younger

Maybe I'm going about this whole relationship thing backwards...

I never had a boyfriend in high school that was my age. The men I flirted with and dated were then the age that I am now. I avoided tentative kisses on the back porch and the other moves of a young partner. I learned about relationships from teachers instead of other students.

I feel that I failed when it was my turn to be the teacher and since that failure I've avoided that role. But now I find myself in a relationship that started with hesitant kisses by the back door and I wonder if I've entered my first high school relationship.

The other night I inadvertently revealed this concern; as we drove away from the other cars parked along neighborhood's edge, he remarked that it would be nice when we had more space to ourselves than just our cars. I laughed and said that high school students had been doing it since the invention of cars.

We can't be just friends anymore

My mind raced as I fitfully tried to sleep. There were two girls sleeping on my floor and I was consciously keeping myself from tossing and turning in hopes of allowing them to sleep well. I may have dozed off for a few minutes before the phone rang in the middle of the night. Quickly grabbing it, my adrenaline raced and even once I discovered it was a wrong number, I knew that my attempts to sleep were done because my mind kept returning to the email from PJ I’d read before my abortive attempts at sleep.

We were nineteen and both fairly new to love on that day before that Valentines Day. PJ sent up a trial balloon, which might've been made of lead for how well I took it. All these years later I can still remember the pivotal line, "Unless we try dating, I can't be your friend anymore."

I sat up all night, quietly at first, staring blankly at the teen fluff movie that my roommate and her boyfriend were finishing, then discussing the whirling thoughts in my head with my roommate's boyfriend after she fell asleep. He offered me valuable insights, but I was still reeling when he fell asleep on the couch with her. I recorded that confusion in my journal but, beyond recording it for painful recollection later, the exercise served no purpose.

It didn't matter that I never came to a conclusion about his email. The grapevine between friends had given me a coward's exit--letting PJ know that his gambit was unsuccessful--and I was greeted the next afternoon with another email apologizing for the impression of an ultimatum. It turned out in the end that his unsuccessful email had opened the door and within days we were on our way to dating. But I can't think of Valentine's Day without remembering that long sleepless night.

What can I say?

There were a dozen white roses on my desk when PJ arrived to walk me to dinner that night. After I turned to grab my ID and keys, I caught him covertly staring at them. I looked away when he met my eyes and those flowers became the silent elephant that followed us to dinner.

I felt hopeful that night when he and his two guy friends left and I stayed behind with the two girls in his group of his friends. I thought that this was the sign that I was becoming accepted as their friend, and not just that girl their friend liked. But the conversation paused and their eyes met. They way they held each other's stare froze my blood.

Y was direct. "I hear you got some flowers today."

I could've lied. D knew that PJ was a young man trying to impress me in way that was more than friendly and, honoring our agreement we could see other people, he sent my flowers to my roommate's mailbox. This was clearly a sign he'd been out of college for a while--the package slip was the best part of receiving any gift.

But I didn't lie. "I did."

The silence from the other side of the table was deafening and my words tumbled over another to fill it. "You see, I'm dating this guy, and so he sent me those flowers, but it's okay because we agreed that we can see other people."

They looked at each other again and this time JA took the lead. "PJ really likes you. You need to tell him about your boyfriend, or we'll have to."

There wasn't anything more to say.

Security blanket

I clutch the tattered pieces of my pain around me like a blanket, unable to let go because they are the only thing I have left. Once I let go of them, our relationship is truly over.

I wrote those words after PJ broke up with me. Tonight as he referred to our breakup, I didn't feel any pain. I thought I had let go of that blanket finally--until his words sunk in.

"You look back and there are things that at 26 you would do differently then you did at 19."

A tiny spark of hope lights in my chest for the reconciliation that I know is impossible. Words rush out of my mouth as I try to smother that spark, deny what it means. I tell him I understand what he did, I agree with it, we should be able to talk about it--and yet I don't tell him that despite my professed agreement with the decision he made, that hearing his voice makes me want him to reconsider that decision, to wrap me once more in the blanket of his love.

Keeping the faith

As a senior in college, two of my roommates and I went out one night to see the latest romantic comedy - Keeping the Faith. From the previews it looked like our standard "feel good" fare. But when Jake, a rabbi, breaks off his clandestine relationship with his childhood friend Anna because she isn't Jewish, I started to sob so hard I couldn't breathe. I stared straight ahead, barely seeing the screen through my tears, afraid that I was going to have to run out of the theater because I couldn't handle the film's parallels to the end of my relationship with PJ.

Sharing dinner on Saturday night with my parents, grandmother and uncle, I chose to remain completely silent as my uncle proudly told my parents how my cousin, who is pursuing entering the seminary, refused to date a guy from college she was obviously interested in because he was not of the appropriate faith. Now that he has started attending the "right" church, they have started dating.

The aspect of these conversations that I hate the most is that I feel like a hypocrite criticizing my ex-boyfriend or my cousin for judging potential mates based on faith. After my breakup with PJ I questioned whether I would have been able to convert to Judaism if he had given me that choice. I ultimately determined that while I rarely demonstrate my faith, it was important to me to raise my future children with the same quasi-religious traditions I grew up with. The fact that now I use religion as a criterion for dates hurts me when it reminds me of how PJ and my cousin have pushed me and others away.

History is a teacher

I briefly dated my friend F when I was a senior in high school and he was a junior. My best friend had started college and I was still finding my place in school without her. Lunches while I dated F included his group of friends and even though our relationship ended fairly quickly, his friends didn't ostracize me. While I didn't have their shared history and sometimes felt like I was in a different world as a senior facing college applications and graduation, I appreciated being included when celebrating the holidays and eating otherwise lonely lunches.

My attraction for PJ was instantaneous and I plotted to catch up with him at the movies the night I met him. After my first dinner with his friends, I was automatically included in their group. Despite not being his girlfriend for another year and a half, and even after our breakup six months later, I lived with friends that were originally his and was there to celebrate when two of them got married.

Today at the end of the day my newest teammate at the office came over and chatted with me. Thus far she has kept pretty much to herself, save chatting and playing Ultimate Frisbee with her friend from college--the guy I went out with last weekend.

Looking back at my past, I see one possible future playing the role as the older and wiser girlfriend like I was with F's friends. If I'm lucky, perhaps I could end up with lifetime friends like those I gained from my attraction to PJ.

Online dating

PJ and I were having a very enjoyable conversation last week, when he asked me if we could talk about our relationships--or was that too weird? He caught me completely off-guard, so I stalled for a moment, and then said, "Sure, it will be awkward, but if we're going to be friends, it would be easier if there weren't off-limit topics." Turns out he's single now. Kind of a relief actually--I was afraid he was bringing it up because he wanted to talk about his girlfriend.

He told me that one of his friends discovered that she couldn't say she was a rabbinical student in her online dating profile because it attracted men who were looking for therapists, not girlfriends. "You mean on JDate?" I interjected. "Yeah," he said, surprised that I knew about the popular Jewish online dating site. "I say I'm a graduate student on my profile. Then I tell them I'm a rabbinical student in our first contact."

I am amused by the irony that rabbinical students, a group I would imagine to be hyper-moral, are keeping truth about themselves from potential dates. I do appreciate that they are keeping an aspect of their lives private for their own safety. I have at least one other friend who also struggles with what information to share, and when, in the online dating process. And it is much like the process I go through as I prepare my blog entries--what information should I reveal?

Lies of omission

Yesterday I posted about I often fantasize about men I know as I go to bed. (Get your mind out of the gutter!) I admitted to thinking about T even though I'm not proud of it. Well, there is someone else who keeps appearing in my fantasies--his name is PJ.

I was fine until I saw him in Chicago for the 4th. After we broke up I had to convince myself that I didn't like who he'd become. I think that was legitimate--I didn't like the PJ who wore glasses, applied to Rabbinical school and dated the giggly freshman who shall not be named. But seeing him that night, he was the 25-year-old version of the 18-year-old I fell for. He drank beer and was able to casually hang out, but he still has every moment of his life planned and in him I could see the freshman who always did his laundry at 1:30pm on Tuesdays. I think PJ may be the only person in the world who would say that he was excited about reconnecting with his old friends because he wanted friends in his life who didn't think of him exclusively as a rabbinical student--who else analyzes their friends that way? I was immediately attracted to PJ the first night I met him in Connie's room freshman year and I felt the same way that night. If he and I lived in the same place now, I would be in trouble.

We're trying to be friendly now. We send the occasional email and we've talked on the phone once. But it is still a little stilted and I work hard to be breezy. (Remember that Friends episode where Monica finds a message from Tom Selleck on her machine after they've broken up? "Old or new? Old or new?" So she calls his machine and totally negates her breezy message when she says "I'm breezy.") In fact, even when I want to immediately respond to his emails, I make myself wait a couple days.

So in my head I imagine a day when he is a rabbi in Denver, our friendship rekindled and once more leading us to become more than friends. I know it will never happen but it is still a nice picture to fall asleep to.


(This does raise an interesting issue of how men can be perfect when I fantasize about them and essentially I'm creating an ideal man from the template of an existing one. But I'll put that off for another time. )

Origins

I was studying for my finals during my first semester in college when I had an unexpected visitor. It was my best friend PJ at the door. He had taken a break from his own studying to stop by and drop off a Rice Krispies treat and a note. The note went something like:

Angineer-
Good luck with your studying! :)
-PJ

No one had ever combined "Angie" and "engineer" to create the nickname "Angineer" before that, or since actually. Soon after that PJ and I shared our first kiss. It took another year before we had a real relationship, but our relationship never made it past the six month mark. I lost my best friend in that breakup and the year of turmoil that followed. It is only recently--four years later--that we've been able to set that aside and be friendly again. But somehow Angineer came to characterize me in my own head.

The nickname Angineer never seemed more appropriate than it did last night. There was a huge rainstorm here and as the rain started to let up, we pulled over near a drainage channel and watched as the water rose and almost overtopped the bridge because it couldn't get through the bridge opening fast enough. It was like watching a hydraulics lecture in action--and I really enjoyed it. In fact, I wished I had a flow meter to measure how much water was passing under that bridge. The best part about working with engineers--they get excited about big storms and drainage channels too.