antecoitus

At eleven o’clock on a Monday morning in the office, I was laughing at some joke my boyfriend made about having an ex, not specifically about his or mine, just having one in general. Still talking to him, my eyes started wondering around my table and around my office when they landed on a stack of CDs that my ex made for me before I went to

Europe

for my two year stint. Those CDs now contain relatively older songs, not only in fact but also in what they represent. They epitomize a lot of who I was two years ago, of what my life was like. Now staying in my office with a pile of business week magazines, three open excel sheets and right after trying to explain to an area manager why we cannot do some VAT filing for a client because it is against the law, in a turtle neck sweater, warm polyester skirt, boots and glasses, with my hair up, saying “I love you” to a blonde blue eyed man at the other end of the phone line, something clicked. This is a different life, mine, sure, but still mind blowingly dissimilar to my past and to my planned present.

My issues now include: Should I get a flat on my own or should I start living with my man? What am I saving for? How can I best plan my last five years before thirty hits me right smack in the forehead? How can I best take care of my parents and my loved siblings? How can I make this career lead to my ultimate goal of working for other people? How can I best prove my principles in little ways? How do I enrich my life and nurture friendships more? Where do I want this passion for photography lead? Deep, disturbing, hilarious.

The issues that I tackle now are quite different; my view of life, of relationships, even of marriage has changed. This may have been brought about by the fact that being away from all possible comfort zones, trying to make a life of your own, not just letting the flow take you places taught me to fight harder (shitloads more than I probably would have if I did not make some of the decisions I made, some I had to, some I plainly wanted) and humor life more. The painful parts, the disappointments and the funny endings, made me able to turn my head 90 degrees more than Linda Blair. Fighting is a humbling experience; often it is as profound and as difficult as acceptance.

When I told my best friend that I have grown up and was scared that even I cannot grasp the enormity of the changes in my character, I did not know what I was talking about. Until now.

Though the basics of my character have remained (something I proved half a year ago), I have changed, something an ex boyfriend would probably resent if he was still a still and not an ex. As some guys I know would have put it, “I like my girlfriend because she is exactly right for me”. I’m not; I was never ‘just right’ for anyone, no matter how much we fooled ourselves. It could be the reason why this new relationship is fitting me, because its expectations are managed on the basis of free flow, more difficult, more interesting. I used to rebel against myself, convincing myself that there is a way to get grounded, probably by a typical life or a fixed deal. However, believe you me, by virtue of first hand experience, when you are like me, even the most proclaimed liberal of all possible Romeos would back off. That is since funnily though, they are the most sententious, the least brave and the most proud. Having grown braver and more clear on what I want out of either a business meeting or a couple’s spat, with finally that little healthy dose of disillusionment, my type A slightly mad personality would have made him want to die… drowning or burning… it would not really matter.

Now I have decided to move my life away from home indefinitely. I am staying here with my boyfriend, looking to land somewhere less subdued by standards and more by reality, a different path, and admittedly a path that is more me. Stubborn, playful, exploratory.

I have changed, fully conscious of a direction but sometimes disoriented with the consequences. Life is like that anyway. We say ‘I know everything about my life’, but in the end, all those inevitabilities can throw you off, until one day, you look at yourself in the mirror and realize that had you been looking at yourself two years ago, that image would have been looking back at you with a crinkled forehead mouthing the words, ‘who the fuck are you?’. But it’s not like that. You everyday look at yourself in the mirror thinking ‘I did not change at all, I feel the same, I feel myself.’ To recognize character change is especially difficult, particularly when you are busy making supporting details to a subliminally fated design.

I had my appraisal with my manager recently and some of the things he wrote on my conclusion I would have never thought of myself. He made it sound like I am a full grown person, and fully respected, finally. Then I realized, your own development is as invisible to you as your decline. When I started writing more, traveling more, learning another language, opening my circle of friends more, doing more photography, challenging more, playing with life more, in general, looking back, I felt richer with each moment. Changed for the better? I will never be able to tell. That’s the beauty of it.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 16th, 2006 at 7:21 am and is filed under the buzz (current tsismis). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.