ჩემი გოგო

 ჩემი გოგო he says, coming home, crawling into his bed right next to me. It's late. Or early. His breath smells from alcohol and tobacco. Oh I'm so drunk Lina. I had so much fun with my friends. I can't help but feel fully happy with him. Despite the early morning hour and my tiredness, I am glad I'm awake to receive his drunk affection. I missed you. I really wanted to hug you when I came back home you know. I felt it with all my body, not just in my mind, I could feel it in my flesh. He keeps murmuring in his sweet drunkenness, burying his head in my neck. Why are you even awake? He's asking while I hold him close to me, my hands in his hair, my lips on his neck. I could sense you were coming I say. Only minutes before he came back home, I slowly woke up like I could feel he's coming back. You're a witch, ჩემი გოგო, he repeats like he has many times before.

I love this sweet drunk version of him. I love how he has been looking forward to come back to me, crawling into the bed next to me while he was out with his friends. He sends me texts to check on me but I was already sleeping. Oh then together with my desire to spend time with you, it is also necessary. I'll try to be emotional with you or if you need emotional support to be there. I'll come back at night while probably you'll be asleep and I'll try to make your dreams calmer. He texts me during the day when I get overwhelmed by my emotions. I didn't expect that sort of connection. Let alone within one week. One single week. All cool I was going into this as if nothing could happen after everything I've been through, especially now being also reconnected to my painful past. It only took one week to make all my cool disappear and my sensitivity kicking in.

So here I am, feeling strange. Feeling lost and creating a space in my mind that wasn’t there before. This one night just created something deeper. His words, his actions. Quite the opposite of everything I've known before. Warning me about himself, his feelings, his notions, his anxiety. His tendency to run, to fly away... Confronting openly anything and everything that's on his mind no matter how uncomfortable, no matter how inconvenient. Clearing the space for us. No awkwardness or discomfort big enough for him to hide away a feeling or thought he has about himself, me or us. Not for his own sake, but for ours. Even protecting me in my processes, supporting my wellbeing in ways that sometimes I couldn't find myself. Reliably running into the same scenarios over and over again for all these years he's looking at me seriously but not so serious. Affectionate. Lina, you have to understand every man wants to f*** you. We're having a drink and it's not like I hear the things he says for the first time but the way he's conveying them to me with all his kindness and sincere care for me, I feel like it's the first time in my life I receive the message. You cannot give so many chances to people. One ok. If a person f*cks up then ok a second chance. But that is maximum. A person who doesn't use that second chance doesn't deserve a third one. He will not take it. Story of my life. He knows. And it's easy to see all this just by looking at me after one week. He wants no relationship and yet what do we have here?! 

The way that Sunday night connects us within exactly seven days starts to even scare me. Or maybe it's just irritating. Or strange or.... Maybe it just came so unexpected that I didn’t expect to lose my cool. Whatever it is, it is taking me over the next day. When I walk through his flat and I can sense that as many times as he's warned me that he doesn't want anything fixed and that I will be hurt. Giving me the safe space to feel it comes to me as the same truth.

How will I deal with it the first time he doesn't want to see me? How will I process this all too familiar feeling of being rejected? How will I feel when he’s done exploring me and will start to push me off, not have time for me anymore because he needs to see his friends, not answer my texts anymore because he's too busy at work? It's exactly how he's pointed it out two days before when he repeats again and again that he doesn't wanna hurt me and I want to assure him that there's no need to worry. No need to worry is what I always thought, being through so much pain, being so independent, having had it all in a dating period of 20 years. Now being with him, I don't seem to feel the urge anymore to even be strong and overplay anything at all... after all rejection is all I know. Being left is all that’s happened, otherwise I wouldn’t be here. And so I find myself confronted with my own pain again and I know… I will be hurt. Because that’s all I know. I will be left because this wasn’t meant to be for long from the start. He won’t take me on trips or introduce me to his friends, I will not cook for him or bring him lunch to work because that’s most likely not included in his plan of not having a girlfriend.

What I thought I knew about myself doesn't matter anymore because it seems knowing him, I slowly start letting my guard down. Only what you feel is real he said in the very beginning. With his presence he has created a safe space for me where I don't need to hold up my shield anymore. Where I can let go and feel what I feel and not be judged for it. Maybe I never had that space unless inside myself but not held by another person where I all my hurt and pain starts coming out of me. And yet this is not what he wants. He wants peace.

When I leave the next morning, I know we will not meet for two three days and it feels like unsafe. Everything starts becoming unsafe now as it’s always been. Only now I start sensing it. Every time could be the last time. I don’t know if this was the last time or will it be the next. If there even will be a next time or if he’s already had enough of me. I don’t feel that same uncertainty when I’m at his place because wherever he is, he wants me there when he returns. But when I’m away I don’t feel that anymore.

I feel stupid and I can clearly see where this is going. It's exactly what's been overwhelming me. I'm not even upset about my alone time or that we are not seeing each other, I am used to that. The loneliness I feel far away from the people I love. I start feeling this loneliness. Lonely with myself, realizing what a beautiful life he has. His friends, his family, his work. He doesn't need me, is exactly what he knows as well as I do. And I cannot need him. I feel how lost I am without my friends. Without anyone around who can hold me, it cannot be him when he has a full time job and the biggest circle of friends that I will never belong to. Because this is not what he wants. As he said himself he already has enough friends he doesn't need me for that. Or for anything for that matter. And this shall be beautiful if it wasn't so much connected to my personal pain.

In a foreign country, a city with no water in and no friends in over 30 degrees, starting a new life as a stranger, I come with either. No job, no friends, and no home but a lot of time on my hands. I'm a nomad in a foreign country. Meeting someone like him with whom it feels so natural that I can feel at home. Feel myself, feel safe and loved and yet... knowing it’s not for him. I cannot. I shall not. Because it is not what he wants. He has his group of friends and I am alone. Thinking if I should go back into the app to distract myself. Make it easier for him and me. Find other people to not put my focus on him. I know it is also no solution for what I feel inside.

When I walk in the streets in the early evening, knowing that he is out with his friends, night two, night three to come, being so happy and full of joy for life and me, not being part of it, all I can feel is this stinging loneliness that he was talking about. Again. Hearing his words resounding in my ear over and over again... I don't need you as a friend I have enough of them. The best ones... I realize that I don’t. I do need a friend. I do need someone to rely on and yet this will be the end of us. A person who is in need cannot give. I have nothing to give that he needs... And so I will be hurt. And I cannot do anything about it. These notions making me feel isolated, introverted, almost scared of people that I wanna hide away, not even knowing what I want or how I feel. 

My tears coming out for the third time today for different reasons, receiving ugly messages from just a prior encounter who didn’t manage the separation, insulting me over the phone. Another reminder of what a powerful trigger rejection can be. After he’s stalked me into the hostel two weeks before he now tries to get back into contact with me. As he doesn’t get the desired response from my side this is what happens. 

Modern Socrates: @philosophyimmortal

You have been insulting me from the veery beginning. I take it all i have never said anything bad to you or did anything bad to you. I even left the hostel you didn't want to see me. I don't know why. Why do you dislike me this much? Just why? Tell me the reason why.

When I block him, he keeps going over the next messenger: 

Fuck you. You continue to live in your bubble and remember the guy who gave you a phone and this and that 3 years ago. You're so close minded and egocentric and arrogant. You were mirroring yourself when you told me all these and many more insults.You went to india to find yourself? Well, you couldn't! You were getting obssessed with me since the time we met. And super paranoid with everything about me. You are absolutely not a calm person and you absolutely do not have an inner peace. Your will is devouring yourself and eating your flesh row. You have no awareness. Just fuck yourself. You know nothing about life. Okay bye. Well, you deserved all this. Life is nothing but a balance. You told me all those and i told you back now with absolutely less volume but more intense. Okay bye.

 Quite the opposite of what I receive in the morning when I go for a run. Singing and crying I receive a mail as if the Universe wants to remind me of all the good people see in me. A gift. A gift for realizing my dream. One L, double PP. The one who was so encouraging and so supportive, pushing me closer to it. Also reminding me of L double pp from last year and how he dropped me within a moment or a second thought. Without finding any empathy for my feelings. All these different energies coming together in just the same places. And still I’m just scattered all over the place when also I don’t wanna deny the beauty of it all. After all I have feelings. Whatever they may be.

When I feel I don't want to write too much because I am too scared he will not have the time or will to answer, I know it’s only in my mind and if I give in, I am the very one manifesting it as he hasn’t given me reason. I feel confused and hurt. Sad and lonely when most likely nothing has changed within the last 48 hours and yet I cannot deny that my heart is heavy. Heavy from past pains, scared from an uncertain future and confused from an unexpected now.

Love and hurt are two sides of the same coin. It's what the book said. Romantic novel at its best. We cannot have one without the other is exactly what he keeps saying. He just wants peace and with women you cannot find peace. Peace is what she wrote me exactly that morning. She was listening to a podcast she said and the guy said that he started to act differently - from a place of peace and calmness. You just popped into my mind. That I feel this in you a lot especially in the last months she says. I feel so touched by her words. Have I become closer to myself throughout the last months. I wish he would feel the same around me. მშვიდობა.

And then maybe someday when there is enough peace for all of us, I will be someone’s ჩემი გოგო.