You Put a Spell on Me, I Don't Know What to Do...

Yesterday Marco and I went walking through a little town nearby and stumbled upon a kitchen store. As I was perusing the frivolous things like multi-colored cheese knives, I saw Marco examining cast iron Le Creuset pans and sets of champagne flutes.

We ended up walking out with a water carafe, teapot, wine rack, two trivets, and a little loose-leaf tea holder to make the apple tea we recently picked up in Turkey.

When we got home, we booked trips to Thailand and to a small island off the coast of Venezuela.

I think we're in this for the long haul...

Whenever I Don't Want You, All I Have to Do is Dream...

I've been dreaming about Raf a lot lately. So far, I'm unable to put my finger on what triggers these episodes of frequent Raf appearances. It doesn't seem to be connected to my being stressed, or relaxed, or any other mood I'm in. Often, I'll have the most vivid dreams about Raf when I'm perfectly happy and thriving.

The other day, someone asked me whether I frequently remember my dreams, or whether I seem to only dream of Raf. Excellent question! As we all know, everyone dreams all the time. The trouble is that your brain suffers a type of amnesia when it wakes up from its coma-like state. So it only seems like you dream every once in a while. I happen to remember my dreams quite frequently, and they are much-varied and plentiful. So while I tend to only report Raf dreams on this blog, have no fear: my subconscious has another life!

When I first received Raf's end-of-friendship email (wow, typing that makes me realize again how cowardly it is to end a 10-year friendship by email. By fucking email! ), I frequently dreamed about things that had already happened. In those scenarios, Raf and I would be talking at our present ages in situations we had been in when we were younger. On a camp porch, a grassy hill, a raft, my house, etc. We were always talking, always discussing things past but also debating the future. When I found out about The Kid, my dreams switched to scenes of me seeing Raf (and sometimes Ingrid) from afar, but always walking away or waking up before I got to speak to him.

Recently my dreams have taken a dramatic shift. The Kid is now nearly two years old (which makes me realize how old and pathetic I am for still dreaming about Raf to begin with), and I've just had my first dream in which I interact with Raf again. Yet somehow the interaction is not direct - it's a bit difficult to explain. In this recent dream, I am somehow part of Raf and Ingrid's household (a visitor, a guest, a nanny?). I am holding The Kid almost at all times. Raf is instructing me to do things, but he is almost talking past me as if he is actually speaking to someone behind me. Yet every time I turn around, embarrassed, to see to whom he is speaking, there is nobody behind me. Ingrid hovers vaguely in the background in a non-threatening way. My feelings toward her are neutral, as if she does not truly exist but is a piece of furniture in the room.

Needless to say, I have no idea what to make of this pile of garbled snatches.

The only thing I am sure of is that my dreams have not given up trying to process what my conscious self has worked hard at letting go. I guess I'm cool with that, as long as the dreams don't become too distressing or frequent.

Maybe Raf is slowly moving through different parts of my brain, being corralled into the part where you store the long-term memories you only think about once every 5 years. Corralled by my subconscious sheepdog, cleaning my brain, making room for new dreams about people who add value to my life.

But before I dismiss all my dreams as frivolous mixed tapes of a confused past, know this:

The Kid is a girl, just as I dreamed.

Another Year, Another Silence

February is cold in northern Europe. When it's not raining, the sky is so gray you could swear it's about to rain. It all starts in November, when you realize all of your daylight hours are spent inside an office building. Then, if you're lucky, it'll snow in December/January and the sun reflecting off the white streets will make it seem charming instead of bitterly horribly. But about halfway through February you start to wonder: "Why did I give up a job in a warm climate to come here?" But then something amazing happens: as the days slowly grow longer and the sun peeks out from behind the clouds more often, you feel almost giddy with anticipation. It won't be long before people break out the terrace furniture and sit outside with short sleeves in 10 degree weather. So even though it will never get as warm here as it does in some of the more tropical climes of the US, the stark contrast with the cold somehow makes you savor it all the more. One day you'll wake up and realize you hear birds outside. Blink and you'll miss the trees exploding into bloom. It's really quite cool!

If it were socially and financially acceptable for Marco to hibernate, he would. In the winter months, I have to literally push him out of bed with my foot so that he'll get in the shower and face the drab morning. Sometimes he'll walk around the house grumbling about the weather and how he can't wait for it to be spring. He consumes almost twice as much coffee in the months November - February as he does after March 1st. Guess moving to Scandinavia is out of the question! I once asked a Finnish colleague how he did it. Saunas, he said, are key to mental stability during the dark winter months. "The sweat takes away the sadness - the brain disease." Brain disease? I guess that's one way to think about melancholy.

February torments me. It lures me in with the promise of being over quickly - making the winter flow seamlessly and quietly into spring. But the last week of the month is always a yawning gap of time, stretching itself out before me, taunting me. "You can pretend you won't notice, but you will," it reminds me. No, I won't. Not this year. But I always do. It's Raf's birthday at the end of the month. Another year has gone by, reminding me that we really aren't friends anymore. I'm always tempted to write him a Happy Birthday email, but I always resign myself to the same old conclusion: He's made his choice. He doesn't want me in his life. There's no sense in trying.

I don't understand why birthdays and holidays compel me more than ordinary days to get in touch with Raf. I've blogged about it before - how I strongly dislike people who try to capitalize on the sentimentality of momentous occasions to wheedle their way back into your life. Yet I am nonetheless susceptible to/guilty of those temptations myself. What would make Raf respond to a birthday message any more than a regular message? Maybe the idea that I haven't forgotten such a personal detail about him? Or the knowledge that he is still in my thoughts? Then again, he's in my thoughts on many other days as well. Perhaps birthdays have a way of magnifying that interplay of emotions?

It makes me angry that I cannot avoid remembering.

I wonder how long it will take before I forget...?

You Make Forgetting Look So Easy

I Hear That Life Moves On

I remember here

I remember you and me

I remember wild and wild and free.

I remember 'stay'

I remember 'please don't ever leave'

I remember you made me believe
That tomorrow and today

The sun would hold our hands

But the night came in to stay

While you made other plans.

I remember time

I remember days slid into years

Building lifetimes, thinking you'd be here.

But tomorrow and today

Well they misunderstood.

And you went along your way,

I think you're gone for good.

You are the sun gone down,

You are the sky.

You are the moon rushed round,

You are goodbye.

I remember 'go',

And I remember 'well maybe you could wait'.

I remember arms reached out too late.

Because tomorrow and today

Are only here so long.

When there's nothing left to say,

I hear that life moves on.

You are the sun gone down,

You are the sky.

You are the moon rushed round,

You are goodbye.

-------------------

In 2004 I dated a guy that made me the worst person I can ever remember being. After months of agony and a rollercoaster romance, he asked me to move to the city where he lived so that we could work together for the summer. Once I got there and had settled into his parents' house, signed my job contract for the next 4 months, and convinced my family that I was not, in fact, insane, he broke up with me immediately, citing a miraculous religious conversion that rendered me "the incarnation of sin" and him asexual. To this day I refer to my time with him as a litmus test for whether I'm doing right by myself and being kind to others. The guy himself I simply refer to as Psycho Ex or The Bad One. Future posts will be reserved to explain the drama that was the summer of '04, but there is an important part of that hellish period that is relevant for today's post.

The greatest thing my mother ever did for my self-esteem (besides give birth to me, which gave me at least a fighting chance) was to put me on a plane to Europe during said 2004 Hell. I remember sitting in Atlanta at my aunt's house, putting up a weak argument against my mother's insightful comments over the phone about how seeing Pyscho Ex at work every day was slowly eroding my self-worth, causing me unhealthy anxiety, and breeding suicidal thoughts in the darkness of my headspace. I had, my mother pointed out, turned into a complete zombie. Psycho Ex had so completely battered my sense of self-respect and my otherwise freely speaking, opinionated personality that I had given up the fight not only in our relationship but also in my life in general. Concerned offers from friends and coworkers to get me out of the house were met with a half-hearted "I'm busy" and a shrug that made it clear I was completely uninterested in a repeat attempt to save me.

One day an e-ticket arrived in my Inbox, accompanied by a phone call. My mother was putting me on mandatory vacation whether I liked it or not. I was just going to have to let my employer know I was taking a week off to go stay with my family in Europe. Still in a haze of pain, I boarded that plane a few days later and prepared myself for the night-long trip. When I woke up red-eyed and groggy upon landing, something unexpected happened. It was as if my mind - my body even - was coming out of the numb haze that had suppressed my sense of self for 2 years. The odd familiarity of my native language surrounded me as snatches of conversation reached me. Then, after I had retrieved my bags from the carousel and exited customs, I stood in the arrivals hall and wept.

One week away from Psycho Ex gave me the perspective I needed to kick off the healing process. When I returned stateside I reintegrated myself into my family life, finally took my colleagues up on their offers of social distraction, and returned to work without a cloud following me. That summer, I realized that all I needed to distance myself from The Bad One emotionally was to get far away from him geographically. My mother's push had allowed me to seize that opportunity and learn a valuable lesson.

If only I could pull the same trick with Raf...