A New Beginning - from Past to Present to Future

Like an idiot I search my little fanny pack again and again as if I could find what the security couldn’t at the airport. Find what could turn the truth as if it could be relieved because I don’t want to believe how much of the same boy he is like I got to know him two years back. Same same but different. But not different. Walking over Dry Bridge, back home in the capital, my intuition sends an impulse through me, a realization. A memory. Not from my brain but like an old knowledge how I bought my lighter here. Like remote controlled I directly enter the tiny shops as if I knew what I would find. My lighter. The exact one that he claimed to be his. For no apparent reason. One of these representations like back then. Claiming things for himself, denying to do so. Taking instead of giving. In need as if he hasn’t received enough in his life to be able to give. 

It is so far away from my reality to understand such behavior as there is not a single person in my life who would ever remotely do anything similar. And so is my friend when she tells me how angry she’s getting about the story. It’s like distorted perception. That he doesn’t even question himself. I’m really losing my words here. She puts it exactly how I feel. 

It reminds me of my teenage years when we were all self centered, immature and egoistic. As he was two years ago as well when he was sitting in front of me eating my chocolates, smoking my cigarettes each and every day, claiming he wasn’t doing so. Nothing has changed. I don’t know who he is. I never did.

Had I given him another lighter the first night we met again out of courtesy, did he not even hesitate for the blink of an eye to take my other one, even going unnoticed - as latest when I confront him he could have given it a single thought when I tell him it was mine to consider it and yet he does the most absurd thing and twists the reality around as if my words never had any validity in the first place. As if only what is in his mind is of importance as I know it from him from all these times before and claims it’s his, with his degrading attitude of „offering“ me to take it if I needed to. I decline. 

We are back in his games. His teenage trauma games where he seems to be in need to make sure not to come up short. Every time taking as if he didn’t have enough. As if he didn’t get enough. Receiving. Mentally as physically. Lacking. Financial stability, material possessions, love, connection and affection.

I am not seeking for affection anymore. I just do things for myself. His words. One of these things he said to me within these two days when I generously shared my time, my last days with him in India. Despite all my doubts, all my knowledge and experience with him, giving him another chance, opening up to him again. Hearing this out of his mouth, throwing me back in time. His trauma mechanism. Denial. Refusing love and connection to protect himself. Avoidance. It’s worked back then, it still is his strategy today. Not having gotten the affection he is craving, he knows that he cannot seek for it as he hasn’t received it. And what else a hurt soul can do but keep protecting himself in the safest way he’s learnt. 

My lack of understanding about his contradicting behaviors still causing the most irritation and disappointment inside of me. One of the moments, the first night we had he would whisper in my ear how he wants to be part of my life, how he wants to see life through my eyes, how friendship may not be enough, holding my face in his hands, the skin of his face touching mine. I remember now how well he’s created intimacy between us. A master. At least I am aware as this is saving me from the heartbreaking truth that obviously had to come the next morning when again he claims he had not said such a thing. Not anything about the future. I am not saying this because I am drunk. No. It was not because he was drunk. It was that tender side in him that made me fall for him in the first place and yet the side that I could never forget was the one he showed me the next day when he wants to have forgotten all about it again, twisting the truth according to his needs. It‘s just what he felt in the moment. The exact topic I’ve been wrapping my head around for the past weeks, specifically because of our past. The perfect case study and yet he doesn’t seem to be aware of himself and his hurtful childish behavior. The heaviness that he’s carrying. The distance he’s creating by pushing me away, ignoring me, fighting me. 

No display of affection. No closeness, no empathy or connection. My lovely friend who is getting along so well with him on so many levels, outraged when we sit at the bus station and he refuses to give me my bus info when he was the one in the first place who convinced me to enter the wrong number. What an idiot he says. I’m so happy he’s with me. Finally an objective witness. I’m not crazy, I am not overly sensitive, I don’t have any unreasonable expectations. All it is him being an asshole to me for no reason. Maybe he is emotionally immature he says and I find it very precise as I was never able to even put it in words as his behavior is too far off my spectrum to even find terms for it. His spectrum. A spectrum. 

Like a few moments before we had to part when I want to share something personal with him and hand him my phone to see it and I see this familiar bored expression on his face as he’s asking me if he „has to watch it“. Insulting me again. Showing me once more how little I mean to him. That I and my life don’t matter to him. That he has no interest in knowing anything to do with my life in the crass contrast of what he said the first night. 

The old familiar feeling of rejection. As this is what he knows too well. And as it is not enough of a personal humiliation, he starts degrading my person by coming around with some intellectual knowledge, trying to make me look dumb for the plain reason that I named his country India. That I did not know anything about this place. Like a toxic teacher who was here solely to expose their disciples and make himself look better. Again. No matter what it takes. Totally in the blind that his behavior is nothing but ugly. As if it was coming again from a place where he was rewarded for accumulating intellectual knowledge, judging everyone who doesn’t have the same, taste, knowledge or point of view like him. Like he used to make fun of me for my taste in music or anything other that was not according to his taste. Totally unable to appreciate the variety and everlasting facets of life and different qualities in people. Judgement and criticism. No love. No compassion. Let alone cheerleading. I’m sure he’s never even thought about it.

Cheerleading such an important quality in friendship and love. Supporting the other person’s journey, experiences, get excited and upset with them, be part of their life. Like all my beautiful friends around me, it comes flying back to me how it feels to be appreciated, cherished and loved for who I am when my girls are cheerleading all about me. It feels good to be coming back to light and reflections. A long call on the phone when she puts a beautiful picture in my head. It’s like the computer is completely programmed but then there’s something unwired, like he can’t connect his reflections and intellectual understandings into reality. Into doings. On point. 

It was just the very last thing on my mind that you could ever end up with him in his bed. I would have considered everything else. Everyone else. It would have been much more likely that you end up with the fruit seller from the street than him. But I’m also not in my right mind right now. I listen to my bestest words, coming from a deep place of truth. She’s mirroring me. I was the one not being in my right mind and that is heavy to take in. The same truth like two years before.

I wanna cry. I don’t deserve any of these childish power games. Everything seems to be about power and control in his life. About being right, no matter if it takes harming and hurting people, twisting the reality or dissociate the truth. Believing this is how he could establish stability. Yet the truth couldn’t be farther. 

The spectrum of distance, loneliness and coldness. A life evolving solely around himself. A life where relationships don’t find room, where his priorities are misleading him directly into lonesomeness.

The inconvenient truth of a lost boy who still claims to be someone else. Maybe in his mind and yet not in his heart where he is so much in need that he has no space to care for anyone else out there, denying himself the most beautiful thing in the world. Connection. Connection that can resolve all the loneliness.

I’m singing, dancing on a pillar. In the morning, above the city. It’s all mine again. My home. A Georgian man is coming by, smiling at me, putting his thumbs up when I tell him that it’s beautiful in Georgian. My heart so full of this place. Tears running down my face. A new beginning. The fresh green of the spring that has already arrived, the air that’s clean from the rain and the green mountains all around me. Chapter closed. I’m back.