My new mantra: respect and pride. Many people say it helps to have something - a word or a phrase, a thought maybe - to repeat and focus on when in a difficult situation. Murakami says that he keeps repeating "Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional." whenever he hits the wall during a marathon or long distance running race. It helps focus the mind on something other than the pain or the anxiety. I get pretty anxious sometimes. I needed a mantra for everyday life. Respect and pride.
It was Rachel's idea, came up with it while we were running and she was listening to me venting about stuff: about people being disrespectful. We have to start by respecting ourselves before we can expect it from those around us too. We need respect to love: ourselves and others eventually. And if we don't have pride in ourselves, how the hell are we supposed to respect that?
Sometimes, walking away and holding onto pride can be way very liberating even when walking away might hurt at first. I have to learn to let go, to walk away.
Onto more practical things: I ran a new personal best yesterday at the women's only 10K NYRR Mini. Under 8:30 min/miles, which I am very proud of. During the race, I saw a woman with a sign that said "Pain is temporary, pride is forever". I liked that a lot. The whole time I was feeling great, I had lots of energy - 3 egg omelette the night before - and was hydrated - no alcohol the night before - and nothing hurt, it wasn't too hot, too humid, I was inspired by Paula Radcliffe and Kara Goucher giving speeches before the start. It was all about celebrating women's running, which had not always been such an obvious thing. Ladies, we have come a long way, we should all be very proud of ourselves. Now, let's go take over the world from men!
To finish, an adorable picture of Kara Goucher and Paula Radcliffe (both about 5 months pregnant) running in yesterday's race with Paula's 3 year old between them.
Being referred to as a "drinking buddy" by the guy I have been seeing and really like is a new low in my life.
As for my day preceding that conversation: yet another - 6th in 2 weeks - meeting with my adviser, where, once I again, I was told that my productivity has really not been stellar (not sure how I submitted a paper, maybe pulled all the data out of my ass). I really just couldn't take it anymore and went on a smaller rant, to which he was relatively receptive and maybe this is what I should have done right when this whole craziness started, but in any case, I told him that I thought he had been completely unfair with me and how counter productive this whole thing was becoming. And much more... I felt incredibly angry, but somewhat satisfied as well. I am just not sure where to go from here, where to find any motivation.
Trying to let go of the anger now. Yoga, cooking, laundry.
Life goes on. I will finish my paper and will shove it up my adviser's ass.
Men can all go to hell. Drinking buddies, my ass, who needs that?
Not doing a good job letting go of my anger... taking a deep breath now, and calmness...
Hearts break and then presumably, they heal. Time goes by and the memories fade, the pain subsides. But do the little cracks ever fully mend? All I know is that every time, there is a little bit of innocence lost in a way, a new experience ingrained, maybe a little less trust left for the next time. None of this stuff is easy. We are all so very different and often so closed off from each other that it sometimes seems impossible to ever have it all figured out. All I know, is that I am very bad at all of this.
I've had boyfriends across the ocean or just the continent, I've dated coaches, guys who were depressed or worse, one who was twice my age, I have fallen for a family man, once I even had the pleasure of bringing someone out of a self-imposed, 3-year long celibacy, which then led him to realize how much fun it was to screw around and thought that he should tell me about all of this too, but only when I was visiting him, only a few thousand miles from NY. To put it in short, complete disaster.
Among the chaos, I have learned many things. Most importantly, about myself and also about others. I am not sure if it's my nature or if I have arrived at where I am now emotionally through all the experiences I have had, but I have just figured out something rather important about myself. Somewhere along the line, I stopped trusting my intuitions, stopped having much trust in people, and started making broad generalizations based on the few bad experiences I had. However, in reality, I am a hopeless closeted optimist, who has always believed that everyone was meant to experience that great love that we hear about and sometimes see around us. This wasn’t easy to admit even to myself.
There is this boy I have liked for some time now. Sort of like a high school crush, a decade too late. I imagined us in the most romantic ways, my heart fluttered every time I saw him, there were butterflies in my stomach every time we talked. In my imagination, he was perfect. He would be the perfect boyfriend, perfect lover, attentive and considerate. I was also quite certain – except for the optimist hiding at the back of my mind – that we would never be more than two people working on the same floor, friendly the way people are who pass each other in the hallway daily.
Now, it’s time to get out of the world I have created in my head and start living in reality again. Good things we have imagined do happen sometimes! The boy I had a crush on eventually asked me out and that’s when things got a little complicated. There was this picture of him in my head – the perfect everything – and obviously, he is nothing like that. I don’t mean that in a bad way at all. It’s just that nobody is like that. Well, that’s not entirely true. There is one person who’s like that. Me. What I imagine the perfect man to be is really just me in a man’s body. A man who knows exactly what I want, when to call, when not to talk to me, when to kiss me, what to say and so on. Clearly, I don’t actually want to date myself, so this creates a certain amount of anxiety. Maybe I am an anxious person to begin with but this sort of paradox can make things much much worse.
Here is what I figured out so far (with the help of my future therapist, who just really gets me, thanks Becky!): I like living in my head – it’s a perfect life, who wouldn’t? – I am a little scared of reality – often it does not work out the way we imagined – it’s scary to actually get to know someone, with all their flaws, even if they are great; people are different and we have to accommodate for those differences and respect them for what they really are, that is, get to know them in reality, by spending time together, by talking, not by sleeping together. Everything has its time. Life happens out there, with other people and it would be a shame to miss it all by living in the comfortable, perfect world that is inside my head.
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Thursday-Friday, I took a mini-vacation to the Jersey shore with Rachel. Result: feeling much more relaxed and my entire front side is bright red - ouch! Yes, I took a nap on the beach, at noon, in chilly, overcast weather, and surprise, surprise, got burnt. Not one of my smartest moments :) In any case, it was a nice getaway, not being in the city for a couple of nights is nice, so are lots of seafood, sand, the ocean. Living so close to the ocean now, I should really take more advantage of it.
Yesterday, back in the city, visited the MOMA - this is the last weekend of the Marina Abramovic exhibit, which features lots of real, naked people as pieces of art, among other really strange things.
I went through the narrow hallway, in which a naked man and a woman were standing, facing each other, very close to each other, leaving just barely enough room for a normal sized person to squeeze by. The idea is that people can become "part of the art" by "interacting" with the exhibits - people. In the downstairs lobby, the artist herself was sitting in a chair all day, and tons of people were lining up to sit across from her and stare at her for as long as they wanted to. Again, they were invited to be part of the art through this. It turns out that this woman has done way stranger things in her younger years: she has been fascinated by the limits of humans - physical and emotional. In one exhibit, she lined up a bunch of objects on a table - including knives and a gun with a bullet - and invited the audience to do whatever they wished to her, as she was the exhibit herself. Reportedly, one person loaded the gun and handed it to her, then turned her hand so that the gun pointed at her head. She didn't want to die, but wanted to test her and the audience's limits, she wanted to be pushed to the edge. In another piece - a video - her and her then partner were standing facing each other, holding a stretched bow pointing at her. Ultimate test of trust. All in all, interesting ideas, somewhat disturbing presentation. Art? I suppose, it made me wonder, it makes people feel a certain way and isn't that the point?
The rest of the afternoon, I chose a shady spot under an attractive tree in Central Park and was lounging in the grass. Perfect weather, with the perfect person, the only thing to worry about were a few ants trying to climb on our legs. As I was looking up at the perfect blue sky through the crown of the tree, stroking the grass with one hand and his hair with the other, I thought, this moment should be remembered, no matter what comes next :)
Tomorrow is the big day: at 5pm, Eastern time, I can check my MCAT scores. Hard to think about other things, like work and such. Or sleeping. All day today, I was agonizing over the fact that I have to wait until 5 in the afternoon! It's not like they are not going to know those damn scores at midnight tonight! My Mom said "There is a right time for everything." It's true. In the big scheme of things, what do 17 more hours matter? It's good to put things into a bit of a perspective. Get out of my comfort zone and realize how little these things matter.
Riding my bike uptown after a couple of hours at the Beth Israel ER - not a good day at the pediatric ER, lots of very sick kids - music blasting in my ears, dark outside, cool breeze off the Hudson, I am flying down the road, nobody around, just a few joggers here and there, Supergirl from Reamonn comes up on my shuffle. I turn up the volume, it's really loud, and I am singing, more like screaming into the night. A jogger in front of me turns around to see what's going on, then I pass him and think how great it is to be able to scream at the top of my lungs: "Cause I am a supergirl, and supergirls don't cry, I am a supergirl and supergirls just fly!"
I was at a house party last night, advertised by the host as having lots of singletons. No pressure, right? Not that I am very good in big groups in which I know all of one person... anyway, there were only a few people hanging out when I got there, mostly Hungarians, all afraid to taste my home-made guacamole. After some introductions, I sat down next to a good-looking, well-dressed gentleman, who turned out to be working in IT for a big investment bank. I am always worried about the part where they ask about what I do: this guy seemed somewhat interested, although I am not sure how his "what should I eat to keep me healthy?" is connected to Immunology. After contemplating for a while, he said he actually felt sorry for me and that I would have a very difficult time in life. "Yes", he said, "the majority of men out there are just not smart enough for you, and you will have an awfully hard time finding one." Maybe I don't want to meet any of the majority of men who think like that. "Oh, but if you weren't so smart, then you would have a much bigger pool to chose from. Maybe you could get hit by a car and suffer some brain injury, and if you were lucky enough to lose some smarts, you might be better off." Nice.
I spent the rest of the evening chatting with two very smart and interesting ladies.
There are so many things we look forward to or even long for, even if some of those things seem quite out of reach, even impossible. Papers which are in the making for years, tests we fear so much we put off for so long we no longer even think that it is possible to pass them, a person we have been longing to get close to but who seems unattainable; a dream of becoming someone we have always wanted to become; fantasies of change and adventure. And then, a strange thing might happen: you might finish the paper you never thought would be written; looking at the pages of the finished manuscript filled with ink can seem unreal. You might find yourself making a decision to change something about your life that you don't like, take the test you had so feared and find out how well you did on it. You might one day receive a letter that can change your future. You might even realize one day that the man of your dreams you thought didn't even notice you might like you back and when you lean closer to each other in anticipation of that first kiss you have always imagined but never thought would ever actually take place, you just have to have faith. Because the things we imagine, even fantasize about often take on a life of their own and before we know it, might lose touch with reality and then we might not see or believe what's right in front of us. It's easy to say that something is impossible or unattainable and that is why we don't even try reaching for it. But nothing is impossible. And the more I experience, the more I believe that the first step towards accomplishing anything you want is believing in it. And then comes the rest. If you work hard, you will finish the paper; if you study enough, you will do well on the test and if you really want to change your life, you will see to it that what you really want becomes your future. You have to believe in the magic of that first kiss and have to have faith in that person you want to love and be loved by. After all if you don't even have faith yourself, then how should others have faith in you?
