be happy on my own..not having to rely on someone else for happiness

I suppose the flip side of this goal is “realise that I can’t take responsibility for anyone’s happiness other than my own”.
I went to meet D in Kyoto for the cherry blossom season, but he had a kind of mental breakdown and I had to get the police to come and take him back to Nagoya with his family. He was talking and gesturing to himself, hardly aware that I was even there. It was so awful. I couldn’t believe it was him, or how this could be happening. The worst part was the looks I saw people giving him. I wanted to scream and shout at them that they weren’t even worth the shit on the bottom of his shoes, that he’d never been like this before, and that their hearts should be cracking down the middle like I felt mine doing as I watched him having a conversation with himself about how dangerous swimming pools were.
I’ve spoken to him since and he’s back to himself, though obviously terrified because he doesn’t remember anything that happened.
I’m very tired from crying about things I cannot change, and from trying to reason with myself and accept the fact that his happiness is not, ultimately, my responsibility.

Luckily when I got back this evening, Moose’s chocolate eggs were waiting for me. I don’t think I’ve ever needed a creme egg so much in my life.

Anyway, I may be away for a while. Many things need sorting.
Take care everyone.

well, there we have it. D is gone. Time for this goal to shine brightly.

god, I really do dislike A.
I think, to be perfectly honest, that she’s a poisonous little worm.
Gah, it feels good to get that out into the open.

D told her he was leaving and now I’m being bombarded with emails
“I can imagine how you must feel….” no, you can’t, because you haven’t the faintest idea what’s been going on. Why? Because we haven’t told you!
“I’m am definitely very upset about this sudden departure”/ “I just feel so blue about it all”/ “I can’t believe he would do this to me”/ “it’s painful for me just to think about it” any chance of ever mentioning anyone other than yourself, dearest A? No, no, I thought not…
plus the endless “he was my friend, after all”/ “he was a good friend of mine”/ “we went through so much together”/ “I can’t imagine my life here without him” etc etc etc to imply that their drinks-once-a-month friendship was far deeper and more meaningful than anything I could ever have contrived to feel for him…

I’m probably taking it all utterly out of propotion, but not when you consider her completely inappropriate behaviour towards him throughout the entirity of our relationship. She never managed to get over the fact that there were two people in the relationship, not three. I don’t know why I expected the news of our separation to be any different for her.

Stupid cow!

_{gosh, I’d forgotten how theraputic 43things can be!}

Well. I shall try to be brief. I met someone else, thought I should probably break up with D, went to stay with friends to think things over before doing anything hasty, came back and realised that I wanted to stay with D.
Arranged to meet him for “New Year’s tea.”
He didn’t turn up to arranged meeting, rang 40 minutes late, screaming and crying down the phone in Japanese and I couldn’t understand anything he was saying.

He went back to Nagoya saying he was ill and I was left in something of a state of shock, wondering what on earth was going on. He rang to say he thought he was actually going crazy and had gone to be with his family and have psychiatric tests for various things and it was better not to speak to me in the interim. Then he rang to say things were kind of better, the doctors said he was okay and he would come back to Hokkaido and see me to explain things face to face.

Turns out he had some kind of seizure and then was paralysed on his bed for 2 days, followed by a brief kind of breakdown because he didbn’t understand what was happening to him.
They couldn’t find anything wrong with his brain functioning, which in a way worries him more because he has no idea what caused it and whether it might happen again. He has had to leave his job making furniture in case it happens while he is operating one of the sawing machines and he injures himself or somebody else. He is going back to stay in Nagoya with his parents and take up a part-time job while he works out what to do next. He is leaving on Feb 5th.

I am not sure where I will be post-July, but probably not in Japan and definetely not near Nagoya, so we have decided to “quit while we’re ahead”, as the saying goes, and stay in touch but not in a relationship.
I think that pressure would be unwelcome and unnecessary for both of us: we both need space to think over future plans, for ourselves, and work out what WE want out of life without having to stop and consider the other person who may or may not be around to influence those plans.

We are going to stay at an onsen in the national park mountains at the weekend, to say a fond farewell, and then I probably won’t see him again before he leaves.

But on the bright side, he gave me some discount vouchers for half price tickets to anywhere in Japan, so that I can fly and meet him in Kyoto in the spring (we had been planning a trip there before all of this blew up). _{Being a miser and rather impoverished, I couldn’t help thinking that I’d rather he had bought me the tickets themselves, but beggars can’t be choosers I suppose…}

And on the other bright side, I have been working quite hard at this goal over the past year or so, and now that I know what is happening and that he isn’t actually insane or about to die of brain cancer, I am feeling much stronger than I had expected, and happy with the thought that there is a life out there waiting for me to live it. _{still kind of sucks though…where’s that fruit crumble?}

I called, but he didn’t answer. I considered calling again, but no, that is the beauty of mobile phones; he knows who has rung him, and when. I went for a very long walk in the snow earlier on in order to be away from the phone. The ball is his in court. And while I could very much care less, in fact it’s barely possible for me to care more, whether he rings me or not, this waiting by the phone cannot go on indefinitely.
So, I am downloading an episode of good old Midsomer murders, and since that is going to take 30 mins or so, in the meantime I am going to make fruit crumble and custard.

_{still wish he’d ring though}

I’ve been absent for a few days; I might be for a little while yet.
There’s a word in French, boulverser. I suppose you could translate it as overwhelm, or turn upside down, or knock off one’s feet. But for some reason it’s the French word that comes to mind rather than any of the English equivalents. Sometimes a word in one language can pinpoint more exactly, or more subtly, or with illogical preference, than the same word in a different lexicon.
Maybe it’s just the sound of it as it rolls off the tongue.
But I feel myself of late to be a little boulversee.
There is a man, and he is not the man I am with, and I am boulversed.
Nothing has happened but my thoughts, my thoughts, my thought. Crumple and shine like flashes of kalaidascope and one image, his eyes through glass peering behind mine.
I am torn like a flower opening itself up, and I no longer know how I can complete this goal. I tremble at dew drops. I have become very afraid suddenly, of the world, and my courage, and where it will lead.
I feel, very old, quite like new. And I tremble at dew. It feels too much like relying on somebody else. I must be careful. But oh, it is only the open petals that ever fully feel the sun.

It’s 8.49 pm and I’ve just got in from a killer 13 hour shift :(
Tomorrow I have to be at work extra early because the lesson was rearranged to accomodate the speech contest (thanks to whose endless rehearsals I am now losing my voice). I feel generally a bit shitty and under the weather and I really should ring Diachi and arrange to see him this weekend but you know what? I am going to bed. I will wake up, get through Thursday and Friday and spend the entire weekend all by myself, because I haven’t done that in weeks and weeks and weeks.
I will go to the hairdressers, I will eat a nice lunch by myself in a nice restaurant, I will buy a nice blank book in which to store the soup recipes I have decided to collect, I will buy a cream cake and maybe even some fancy cheese and crackers, I will come home and have a face mask, listen to my audiobook whilst knitting, eat my cream cake, eat my crackers and cheese, admire myself in the mirror, go to be in my best silk nightie, and sleep right through. Alone.

Aahhhhh.

Or at least, it feels like it has been. And what’s all this “supercheer” nonsense I see floating about? Is there something wrong with the ordinary cheers? Dear oh dear…

Still, given my recent troubles with “the workd’s most stable operating system”, I suppose I shoud be grateful to be online at all. And I really have had a quite wonderful week, with neither hide nor hair of the man friend to sap my independence.

$$$ First and foremost, my crochet squares book arrived. Just looking at all those coloured blocks is enough to calm my mind and give me a strange sense of “zen”. I’ve planned the blanket and all that remains is to find time for it given that I am also about to undertake knitting my very first jumper. I did a scarf a few weeks ago (a drab and dreary grey garter stitch affair, I confess) after seeing another 43thinger’s knitting entries, and since then the bug has bitten deep. I have completed three more scarves – a turquoise, a pink eyelash yarn (only took two and half hours on the train), and a beautiful red and pink and green (reminds me of rhubarb crumble) based on this wicked “criss cross” effect pattern.

$$$ Second and secondmost, I went to Tomokomai at the weekend and had a marvellous time seeing k and M again after all these months. K also had the good sense to convince me that thee was no point trying to save money with the exchange rate as it is, and I might as well spend it while I have it. M and I ended up having an impromptue “horrors of the bargain box” fashion shoot with my camera in a small shop. I bought a particularly shocking skirt in order to appease the shop-keeper, wore it to work yesterday and had nothing but compliments. Met a lovely astrophysicist and even broke with tradition and actually sang karaoke. Bonnie Tyler, Total Eclipse of the Heart. Classic. And now I’ve agreed to go back down to Hakodate for the long weekend in November, although sadly astrophysicist will not be present.

$$$ My hangover was not half as bad as it should have been. Plum sours and gin and tonic is obviously the way to go.

$$$ I defied my qualms about global warming and had a bubble bath, complete with lurid pink sakura bubbles and yellow and blue floating candles.

$$$ I baked gingerbread. It was oishii.

$$$ My earrings are to die for.

$$$ My new boots arrived and they, too, are to die for.

$$$ Fancy dress bowling (I loathe both fancy dress and I despise bowling, but somehow, in combination, they work well together and I bordered on enjoyment).

$$$ My nails are almost at the length when I can paint them a shocking, a horrific shade of red to match my earrings.

$$$ Haircut on Saturday! (I’m thinking Hepburn short with pixish fringe)

$$$ Parmesan cheese

$$$ your mum.

I am having the most beautiful weekend, and it is all mine.

Studied kanji, woman’s hour on internet radio, bought a big heap of tomatoes, waiting for my foccacia to rise so I can rub it with rosemary, a few pages in the scrapbook, played with the cat, 2 hour bike ride, jazz in my ears, a bottle of red wine waiting for evening to fall, a long salted bubble bath at 7 am.

Daichi has been invited out by A, and I have not, and I told him to go, and I meant it. I can sit here, perfectly secure, without anything tying jealous knots in my stomach, because that is his life, and this is mine, and if he really does fall victim to her incapacity to not feel herself the centre of every living man’s desire, then he is not the man for me, and she is welcome to him. And I say that, honestly, without bitterness or spite. God life is beautifully highflung when you rid yourself of jealousy; truly, the most wasteful of emotions. Here come the trumpets!

My phone is turned off. I am smiling and tapping to the jazz as I type this, and I truly have no wish in the world for the company of anyone.

Tomorrow I am having lunch with a friend I haven’t seen for months. I was supposed to go to the onsen today, but it is simply too delicious being alone.

Happiness is.

was said to me once, and now I say to myself whenever I catch myself falling into the trap (oh but how easy it is to fall) of leaving my own happiness in somebody else’s hands.

I wish I could see the person in question again, just once more, not to dote on them in expectation of doting in return (since being doted on equals happiness, apparently), but to thank them, for having slapped me in the face with these words like a glass of cold water.

It was a hot day. I needed the refreshment. I wasn’t at the time but I am grateful now.

If you’re out there Gaby, danke schoen.