Closeness
I find that I have a variety of close feelings towards different people.
Somehow it makes life very confusing when either they need to change or are changing, or even sometimes when they are not.
Ex-bashert for instance. Three/four orthodox Jews...one of them being my ex with my birthday.
I don't mind the change in types of closeness I mind the awkwardness of getting there and his partially mean responses that are so out of character for him to me.
I wish that change would stop.
My Mom:
Doesn't want things to change and suspects my religioisty at all turns.
Meanwhile anyone here would tell you I am fairly religious...in that cute adorable innocent kind of way rather than the "I live in my room and don't come out" kind of way.
It is really hard too, most becuase of the ability to not daven and the fact that your friends will offer you cheese pizza from dominos and yuou can't accept, as well as having to learn all sorts of practical halacha for the first time. Like how to get to the 27 floor of a hotel on shabbat (answer: push it with your elbow, go elbows!)
I need things to cvhange and let myself establish my own indpendence rather than having to think about how my facebook picture compares to my friends, who are starting to go the beauty 24/7 route.
I also am not her mom when it comes to decision making about her visiting. All the other parents make decisions on thier own, so the same should be true of me.
I hung up with her over the fact that she keeps asking, and also if i am really orthodox becuase like all things in college, the interent connection can break and then fix itself wihtout me touching a computer (leave a computer on for 24 or more hours)
Friend name J:
I miss her terribly...she gave the best advice and kind of understood people so well. She is on leave this quarter, b ut I am afraid that things won't be the same when she comes back.
I leave messages for her on her phone, but sometimes I wonder if that is enough...I know I shoudl really write her an email, but who has the time here?
Poetry boy named J:
Since breakup all my hidden feelings have again resurfaced. They kind of slowly do that whenver I am around him, but now it is worse becuase I realizing that I do not know how to escape this situation, to know if he is a player or if he cares, or anything....It has this stuck feeling.
And I hate being stuck.
Friend R:
Friend R is of South Asian desent. Friend R has a ridiculous amount in common with me, enough so that I can stay up until 4 talking to him. This is a problem because he is an aethist nochri, and I should not be doing things like thgat with aetheist nochrim, becuase how do you limit that kind of closeness. Oddly I know I don't want to date him, but if he were jewish I probably would start to wonder, despite that right now as a point I don't want to date anyone.
BTW to all those that are curious: I maintain the right to have an imagination, and he is impeccably nice/gentleman (beyond the cursing) who actually thinks (though I have to wonder about the norse flag in his room, in which I visited while keeping Yichud....hahaha, take that mom!)
He is also my chair, and Iam playign right hand person at UN. While I doubt this will get messy in any which way, I know form other non-jews (chinatown bus can get you interesting conversations) that jewish women like myself have freaked out around guys who were obviously interested in them and visa versa, except that the male wasn't jewish. I really don't want to have a hyperventiallating moment, mostly becuase I think it is stupid. If I can't have very close male friends who are not nin my culture/relgion..well then I am doing something wrong at college.
So this could be a contentious issue for a lot of people. Oddly, I don't see many of the men I know (who are great, go itlotw living group at college!) as that kind of attraictive, but I can see why. Then again I also don't feel I am spending enough time with them (note to self, stop in on the chill dorm parties but skip the drinking)
Oddly, in a coversation in Person R's room, I got him to understand the purpose of being shomer negia (I think this mostly has to do with the fact that he was being sexually active with his last ex, who kind of burned him. Poor guy, no one should go thorugh that.) My reasoning: So you can create an objective closeness with someone. (Perfectly good reaosning, even if it does come from The Magic touch, which I abhor.) Most peplke respect tghat as being religious here, btu don't understand why bother. Even if he thinks I live a highly regulated life (which I admit I do, and on some level I need to practice the regulations better), it is great to know that someone not jewish actually gets what is going on. This is especially important becuase there are a number of people here for whom I am the first Orthodox Jew they have met. My behavior matters more, along side my explanations.
This bring me to Friend S:
Friend S is part of the Jewish frat on campus. He was an orientation aid for hillel (this is how I first met him). He also is broken up with his previous girlfriend.
A) the same person in the frat is teasing us both how we should date (though not together)
B) he keeps asking why I am shomer..and I keep poorly articulating the same things. Or things which make him think that Modern Orthodoxy that I keep is fringe (which it is totally not!!!), since he feels that most of his friends who are Modern Orthodox are not like that.
Hello! Most of the MO jews are growing closer to halacha (as well at times more radical, such as shira chadasha, go them!) The people who he knows right now are either aware of the trend and are trying to ignore it (lets see how long that lasts, becuase comformity is a good thing *smirk*)
So right now he is annoyed with me about it. he doesn't quite get that although I know I am very (deliciously so even, mmmmmm) human, that doesn't mean this is the right time to indulge. (though i keep wondering about when I will....I should be very interesting at that point) So why bother me about it? This smells of something else going on in his head (my thought is hormonal, but ehhhhh)
In the meantime, though I see him as a great, cute guy, I really wish he would buzz off and let it go, or if that is his interest, to respect my relgious behavior instead of trying to change it.
I am behind on my reading from last week so I have to go!
Hmm
The postscript to the conversation with the complicated guy:
He told me to stop being concerned about what is going on.
Like that will happen
Also, I have realized that my presence on this campus is going to require major chizzuk.
I'm young, relatively attractive...and in a place where the underrad orthodox population is nil, and the general jewish population is small.
I'm eventually going to be stuck in situations involving non-jews (i refuse to call them goying, it is perjorative) where there will be wierd sexual enegry that normally develops. And I can't allow that to either a) sweept either person off thier feet or b) get really involved with people like that.
But somehow it feels unavoidable.
Despite the fact that this is a campus where no one dates, too much work and all.
So i feel caught in a crossfire of having people at home feeling th at I need to date, and here where there are no jews and no possibilty of dating. I'm not even sure if I want to date, I feel like I have too much growing up to do.
This past week
Although alls well that ends well, this week seemed like it could crash and burn.
First my bf broke up with me. I'm not sure if I was expecting it or not.
I know I was going back and forth about if i should or should not because of communication issues. But still I was hoping we would be able to resolve that.
Then I tried out for the theatre groups, and nearly missed callbacks (at least i got into callbacks). I didn't make it. I hate the emotion that I feel when I make it to a certain level in my personal/professional (if becing a student is proffesional) life and then knocked down to nothing.
I can't completley my algebraic trig homework for calc.
And shabbat started out with some nightmarish qualities, mostly due to my own bad mood and having to deal with the fact that I am one of three orthodox undergrads in housing currently (this statistic will probably change after I graduate to higher numbers, right now the kashruth situaiton is horrible, but when they redo a dininghall on campus , it will have kosher dining integrated seemlessly into regular dining. Same mealplan, different, full food station, just apply into a dorm that will eat there..tentatively that should happen my senior year.)
However, it finally hit me that, overall, people seem to like me and want to include me.
I got asked back to Model UN for high school students as an assitant chiar for the event, from a guy that said I am one of he easiest people in the world to read body language from, but that I am really good at the section I was orignally placed in (middle eastern summit)
People ask me to joing thme for almost parties in thier rooms, and while i don't participate in any substances, people seem cool with that.
And my friends in my ex's part of the dorm still care about me too (and him) regardless of what happened.
I'm figuring it must be somehting about me irrelevant of whether I do the "right" social thing.
The other thing that happened this week:
remember
poetry boy (search songs of songs in the page)? He's back.
I emailed him about the last psuedo sexual (rather than last sexual) experience we had. We (he) kind of wanted to escape the interminable cycle of sexual type activty, becuase it was starting to hinder our relaitonship as friends......(i wanted to date him, he prefered sexual activity and just be friends, but it was totally not working that way.)
So we argued in Eilat about the outcome. I was so angry at him but i kind of got the message when he said to me "I am not attracted to you enough to see you every day." I really wanted to go home at this point. (He alrady had taken one shot of whiskey in all of this if i had to guess he was trying to loosen up to tell me that.) We got lost and argued some more. he ended up taking me up to my room, where apparently ( i don't remember this part) he was holding me in such a way that would have been a preclusive to a last time, but i dared him not to, so he didn't and ended up just holding me instead. I emailed him about despite how bad and uncomfortable it was (and still can be), that memory made know that I wasn't hated, and therefore helped me fall asleep the night after this breakup.
He ims me back, telling me that he misses me, our past, he missed seeing me tremble in his arms, my body speaking so many little sentences through my every movement, and the fact that I was falling in love with him every single time I stared into his eyes. (all true)
He told me how much he regreted not taking me that very night, and didn't do so only becuase I dared him not too. Either he has great repsect for me, or there is something up with him.
In some ways he has hurt me badly in my past.
Despite our past, he continues to look out to me, and ocvcasionaly (he is a quiet guy after all) confides in me about hos wants and dreams. I think I am the only person on the planet who knows that he wants his wife to be able to kick his ass into shape. Which I cannot do, nor do I want to. (into self responsiblity here)..perhaps I do want to though...
It hurts in some ways to have him slightly back, and to know he will be dissapearing soon as he always does, neither one of us mature enough to do anything about it, and forever locked in each others grip.
I remember hearing secretly in my heart, this thankgiving, while I was still dating my college (ex)bf, after he walked me home partway from shul friday night, asking myself who i loved.
The top answer was my (now ex) bf, and still is. My (ex) bf was starting to breka me free of the patterns I always knew about love and hate, patterns which just have fallen apart.
The answer swirling around underneath this top love, a love than never was able to grow deeper and truer, was this guy that haunts me always, and it keeps staying that way no matter what I do. This has been going on since the early days that I met him, where I didn't know his name and I kept meeting him randomly in the streets, where he kept listening to me to the point I thought he was attracted to me midly, but I brushed it off. I still remember our fist conversation so vividly as a result. He was walking around with in the nice area where we live, we sat down at a bench, and I explained him the process of how to do a bezel set.
I wish our complicated relationship was not so. I generally don't say this aloud until something happens. Which of course, something did happen.
As long as he is gone, I am fine, happy, and for the most part able to move on.
Back in, and suddenly that all stops
Depending on how there he will be via im, well, how long do you think it will take for me to be back where I started, only this time in a sense even more lonesome.
Un-
There is no more bashertville.
All i can say is that I am in shock and pain.
Apparently I still care for him deeply in person, hence pain.
Also he apparently is coming after this with a pleasantness, not nice, but pleasant.
so distant and cold, like the surface of the planet oribiting a dying star.
I hate pleasantness, since he is taking this as nice.
No it is worse, becuase you cannot critcisethat fact, becuase he can always counter that he is nice.
He doesn't feel abandoned like I do, especially when one of my darkest secrets is having no slef confidence becuase i beleive that I am good, but I don't see the world as validating that, and hence i might not be good, leavin me in paradox that i work out by trying to be exactly what the world tells me to be.
Right now, I want him to feel the ambiguity of feelings, rather than internalize them and be cold.
I want him to know that if it is just the irritating things, what about the goodness and how that makes you feel, about that paradox.
I wish I could understand unconditional love. It is what I need most.
I feel one moment ready to hurt him so badly, of all the things i could do, and the next i blaim myself, becuase I see him as essentially good, though right now he is hurting me.
i don't understand why he thinks hti sis right. I thought caring was important.
right now i am rehashing all the good things he said,, and how i didn't have the self confidence to beleive him, but how wonderful they are even so.
It would hurt less if i didn't invest myself, but I do.
I wish someone would save me from the pain....or give some of it to him....
I want love so badly it hurts....
I'm exhausted from the day, night
