date SMARTER

I want to write about coerciveness, or the idea of being coerced, whether it be to smile, hug, or sleep with someone, and the feeling of guilt around saying no, or that one doesn’t have the right to defend oneself. It’s just something on my mind. There’s a certain amount of socialization I learned that I feel played in to some of the patterns I’ve ended up perpetuating in my relationships, and I really want to think about this. And I see some younger girls falling into the same trap and then getting hurt by it, and I see some men capitalizing on it. But I think some of this starts really young for us, or I know it did for me, and it made knowing how to set limits pretty confusing and unclear. And it took getting to the point where I was in a pretty bad state to get to a place where I knew I had to look out for myself, take care of myself, and protect myself like I am gold. It took me a goddam long time to get to that place, too. Anyway, I wish I’d learned it as a kid. I wish I was taught that I didn’t have to hug the creepy guy in the family, that I wasn’t responsible for that person’s feelings. I wish there was someone who had my back and taught me that my gut instincts were true; that if my stomach was in knots around a person there was a very good reason. I think that would’ve saved me a great deal of difficulty later.

I think the world would be a better place if women were taught self defense classes at an early age. Seriously. Imagine the impact that would have? I went to a self defense workshop a couple of months ago, and it was great. We practiced scenarios of invading space and protecting space and it was a great experience for me. We didn’t get to any combat techniques until the very end. What we worked on most was how to pick up verbal and body language cues, and how to respond. How to move away from someone moving too close and how to respond verbally to someone who doesn’t let up. And later on that night I had the opportunity to use one of the techniques; with I., who I’d been putting up with a lot of verbal nonsense throughout the year. Suddenly it was very clear, and within a 15 minute period he was gone, completely! He made one attempt to get in the final word and then was gone, and I didn’t miss him for a minute after that. It was one of the clearest moments I’ve (ever?) had!

So, anyway, I’d like to write more about this at a later date.

my belief in big, meant-to-be love. Mr. Yes was loving with me even when we hadn’t eaten for 15 hours, he’d had one hour of sleep on the plane and our luggage was lost. He cheerfully hung out with strangers while I did my maid of honor duties. He kissed an arc from one shoulder to the other and told me I was beautiful in my strapless gown when I was lamenting my pec muffintops. He wouldn’t eat wedding cake unless I fed it to him, asked me to slowdance and held me close all night. He put up tents, checked fuses, hooked dresses, found keys, had brunch with my ex, calmly accepted three death threats on my behalf and after traveling all day and missing dinner on Tuesday, he came back for more goodbye kisses and wants to see me tomorrow night.

I could happily wake up next to this man every day of my life.

so off and on during this year, i was dating/hanging out with/casually screwing or whatever you want to call it with medical school student. smart, charming (a little too charming at times) good English… and with all intentions of doing his residency in Nagoya and then practicing in the US someday. well, i have no intentions of leaving Japan, so if we became Legitimately Boyfriend and Girlfriend, we’d just be killing time. he, being 3 years younger than me, is alright with killing time, but that bores me. i want to find one i can kill time with indefinitely. so, i was alright with only meeting up maybe once a month for a little, ahem, “fun.”

or so i thought… because i bumped into him a few nights ago at the bar, the drunken flirtation started again, he made some comment in Japanese about how hot i looked in the skirt i was wearing, and we paid our bar tab and started walking home together…

and then he tells me he has a girlfriend.

BANG ZING ZOWIE

suddenly, in my drunken state, he became a betraying scumbag who only wanted to play around with the foreign chick before finding a nice, proper japanese girl he can take home to mom and dad, and i was the foreign slut trash who no one wants as a girlfriend, even of the “killing time” variety. i kinda went off on a teary tirade and ran off, leaving him to watch me go.

i felt like an absolute worthless piece of crap. i don’t know if anyone else can relate to my particular situation, but as a foreign woman in Japan, sometimes i just feel like the girl they want to play around with before settling down. everything else here is fine; i have good friends and i’m starting a graduate school program that will help me achieve my dream of becoming a lecturer/language teacher in a Japanese university. but the love thing… everything seems to be against me. all i want is for someone to think i’m good enough to want to take me to dinner at their parents’ house, have the balls to say “well yes Grandma, she is from that country that vaporized your uncle in the war, but i love her and she makes me happy.”

that’s all i want. and every rejection i get, even from someone i KNOW isn’t really worth it, feels like further confirmation that i’m just not worth the damn trouble. sure, intellectually i know that’s not true, that i’m being both sexist and racist, but… i just can’t stop thinking this way. i want to, but i don’t know how… even in my own country, i’ve never felt like i really have anything to offer a relationship besides the superficial stuff (decent looks, brains, good musical taste, good in bed) and nothing that will keep them around. now i have an excuse to feel alienated.

it’s funny, all through high school i felt like i didn’t even have the superficial stuff to attract guys, and now that i have all that, i’m finding that, despite the 2 master’s degrees, 3 languages and 12 years, i’m still the same fucked-up neurotic head case i was at 15.

I had a busy day yesterday. Work has been rushed and then out to meet with the new trainer and work out, then change back to work clothes and rush to meet Mr. Yes and watch a climbing movie being shown at a brewery. I forgot to eat dinner (!) and made it to the brewery in just enough time to grab a beer and settle half my butt on a chair. (It was standing room only.)

The movie, instead of being an hour long, was over two hours. A lot of it was interesting, and it was good to cuddle up with Mr. Yes, but why was I spending that much time in a busy week watching a movie about something that doesn’t fascinate me when the laundry isn’t done and I have a ton of stuff I need to do at home and online? Answer: I was being a good girlfriend. Or was I being a too good girlfriend?

I think the smarter thing for me to have done is to tell Mr. Yes that I hate rushing and am having a busy week and we’d wait to see each other until the weekend. I’m going to take Friday to go to the gym and do laundry and putter around the house, instead of going to his place. Yes, it’s lovely that he wants me to be a big part of his life and the things that he loves. It’s lovely that being with me makes him happy. It is also lovely for me to take care of myself and realize that rushing is very bad for my energy and mood and I need to be smart about my time commitments. I never want to resent him for my bad choices and the way to make sure that doesn’t happen is to be clear about when I’m not interested in joining him for activities that just aren’t my thing, instead of being flattered that he wants time with me and pushing myself too hard.

sigh.

he’ll be in Tokyo until whatever project he’s doing there is finished.

sigh.

i know it’s not his fault or his choice, but god this sucks. but then again, i’m starting grad school at the end of this month and, even if he were here, i’d probably only get to hang out with him once or twice a month anyway.

also, i managed to do a Very Scary Thing. i told him, in Japanese, exactly what i had meant by “I like you,” meaning that i wanted to pursue a friendship with him and see if something can develop from that naturally; not that i necessarily expected some heavy thing from him immediately. then i asked him if hanging out would be alright when he’s back from his Tokyo project, and he said yes.

but that he doesn’t know exactly when that will be… (_‘)

and if the same damn thing happens again like all the others (i.e. he fucks off to some distant city and finds someone better/easier to be with/in essence, Japanese), this time i think i really might snap.

as I feel like I have some emotional street cleaning I want to do. It has been an interesting year where the majority of time I’ve been in some kind of dating situation with someone, and finally I am not. I really want to look at things, take a break, get some rest, deal with some old issues. And also, and I don’t know if I can blame myself for it, but want to distance myself from dating because it has been so baffling to me. I wonder why it’s so difficult. Or has been difficult up until now. And the last situation was very baffling. I’d never been deceived before, at least to this extent; literally SNOWED. So, what can you do? I am grateful that it didn’t progress beyond the realm of conversations over dinner and books shared. I am thankful that I got the information I needed to know (that he is married) long before it could’ve been a really, really bad thing to know. I regret the time I spent daydreaming about him, and am keeping his wife in my prayers. I’m amazed that it happened, happened to ME, and glad that I was able to walk away (and that I’m not married to a person like that, and not able to walk away without incurring big expenses).

So, I’m baffled at myself that I was lied to by someone, and that, for the most part, I had no CLUE! So, the moral of this is that there is no moral, or rather, if you meet someone who lies to you and you believe them, it’s not your fault. You might feel like a fool, but you’re not, and it’s really unfortunate for the person who told the lie as they sabotage every relationship they have by being dishonest. And this was someone who I met in a public place (my work) and he and I even knew some people in common, so it wasn’t an online person that I met out of nowhere where it would be easy to create a different identity.

On the up side, I also learned that I liked making a slow go of it, and doing things like reading a book together with someone. So, it would be nice to do this in the future with a completely single, entirely unmarried guy sometime.

it brings tears to my eyes when i think of how much i care for him. not in the i’d die if he weren’t with me, but in the most real, absolute, adoration kind of way. he’s the most special person to me. he’s a great person all around, a great friend, a fantastic student, a caring and responsible brother and son…he’s awesome.

i did end up adding him to my phone plan, and i don’t regret it at all. it’s costing me only $10 more, but once he finds a job my bill will be cut in half. that sounds good. funny enough, this past week has been so damn stressful for me. regarding every aspect of my life. starting with my financial situation. my bank is charging me $340 because i overdrew my account by $7, and was 20 minutes too late on the deposit cut-off. i know this is my fault, but i can’t believe it’s costing me $340 to fix. this with a mixture of other things going on right now has caused me to feel like the biggest loser on earth. i can’t believe i’m 27 and in this position! UGH! so, i’ve been so stressed out, crying, can’t sleep, can’t eat kind of thing. not so much because of the situation, but because i caused every one of them myself. i did this to me, and it makes me sad. i’m also so very thankful of what i do have, and that this crappy week has REALLY opened my eyes to how much my actions, every single action has an effect on me.

so, my awesome boyfriend has been so damn sweet this week. he expressed how he’s upset with me, loves me, wants the best for me, and doesn’t understand why i do this to myself. he’s pretty much been there for me like no one ever has in my whole life. he’s honest, but caring. i think that’s how it should be when someone wants the best for you, and i have never experienced that kind of support. ever. i am so thankful for him, to have met him, to be able to experience this kind of relationship with him.

because of the happenings in the past week we’ve talked a lot about what we want from eachother and out of life. our future looks so bright. i love that we both want to be with eachother for as long as we’re happy, that we both want to finish school and be in jobs that contribute to our happiness, that we want to move together, be more responsible with our money, enjoy the simple things in life, and just continue to grow and be happy. oh, and just for fun…buy lottery tickets…just in case ;)

there ARE great men out there, don’t ever settle or waste your time on people who don’t bring good things into your life. you deserve better.

before i told the other members of my class, that i’m going to grad school. his reaction was strange, crossing his arms in that way he does when he doesn’t know what to do with himself, and saying a noncommittal “oh…” kind of like my reaction when he told me he’d be working in Tokyo for 3 months god i hope it’s actually 3 months and not time indefinite, like a “well that’s cool for you, so i’m going to be a supportive friend, but i can see how this may affect me negatively.

it’s just… his words say literally “i’m not ready,” but the actions say “i want you.” oh well. he’s still in Tokyo for the time being, and should be back in another month or 2. it’s alright, i have grad school preparations to make, and being moony crazy in love when school starts might actually fuck me up. i tend to throw myself into work when i get broken, so getting dicked over again like usual could actually benefit me.

this whole distance-derailment situation is scarily like the one with Dr Dude and I’m trying really hard to remind myself that… well, it’s totally different. worst that could happen here:
1.) his company tells him to stay in Tokyo for time indefinite
2.) he gets a new chick while he’s there, or there was one to begin with.
3.) he’s not a shy Japanese computer programmer at all, but actually in a recruitment program for spies sent to North Korea to disable nuclear weapons and therefore is placing his life in mortal peril every day.

if any of the above scenarios are true, i guess i would do the following, as usual:
1.) drink a bottle of red wine and watch Bruce Lee fuck some people up on DVD
2.) listen to Queen’s greatest hits albums as many times as it takes to cheer up
3.) drown myself in schoolwork and teaching
4.)imagine Freddy Mercury dancing around to “Another One Bites the Dust” draped in a Union Jack whenever i feel too broken to work
5.) do cool stupid shit with friends
6.) find some hobby or cause that’s bigger than me and my dumb crap

why not just do 3, 5 and 6 now…?

oh yeah, and realise that a lot of this infatuation i feel could be infatuation for Mogwai’s song Fear Satan, which we saw live together. fucking ethereal. _{and i’m probably the only chick he knows who would have sex with him with that song playing in the background and appreciate it like he would!! ha!!}

the lovely boyfriend doesn’t have steady income right now, and his phone just got turned off. he’s not whining about it or asking for help, but i know he is stressed out & a little embarrassed about his situation.

so, i looked into adding another line to my plan and making some changes that i’ve been meaning to get around to…i think it may come out to be either the same price i’m paying now, or around 5-10 bucks more. BUT…should i do this for him? or do i let him figure this out on his own?

i don’t want to fix his problems for him, or take away a life lesson he needs to grow from. if i did this would it help him or hurt him?

hmmmmm…i don’t know?

I told Mr. Yes about the returning PTSD symptoms and EMDR treatment (eye movement desensitization and reprogramming). I was nervous telling him because he’s so calm that I thought he might not understand and I tend to dismiss what happened to me as not “real” trauma.

He held my hand, listened, nodded and said it seemed like a good idea. Nothing dramatic, but I felt absolutely supported. When I said I wanted to be done with all this, he said, gently, “I don’t know that you really get done with something like this.” He’s better able to accept that than I am! He wants me to be happy, whatever it takes. The way he looks at me, with such obvious love and desire, is the best anti-anxiety medicine I have. No matter how much my stress tells me that I’m going to drive him away or something bad is going to happen, being with him, even talking by text, soothes me at a soul-deep level. He keeps showing me how much he loves me. It’s powerful. Very powerful and very steadying.