73. Life Chapter: Bare My Fangs
Lately I thought I would take some time to talk about the things that have happened in my life.
Sometimes I think they’re not really worth mentioning, sometimes I don’t know if I should mention them, and sometimes it all starts feeling a little repetitive.
Now that I’ve been blogging for a while, I understand why some people blog bi-weekly or even monthly. Since this has become more of a diary-format blog, I mostly just write about whatever bothered me or whatever I was thinking about that week.
But lately, not that much interesting has happened that I really wanted to share.
Sometimes life is just plain old boring, so to say.
Although there has been some drama, I guess.
So let me give you the juicy drama and some of the decisions I made over the last few weeks.
Let’s start with something unexpected.
When I was down a few weeks ago, I was surprised by the number of people who cared. At first I brushed it off because everyone can show empathy when someone is down.
What surprised me more was what happened in the weeks after.
Some of those people hugged me tightly and genuinely asked how I was doing. I told them I was doing okay and taking things a little slower.
I was kind of shocked by that.
I think I put up walls without really noticing that some people had started to care about me.
The walls are still up and I’m still guarded, but some cracks have formed and I’ve started to accept that maybe some people actually like me.
There was one exception though.
I ended a friendship.
It was with the girl who helped me take my first steps into bachata last year.
Over the course of the year she became unreliable. She often didn’t show up when invited, whether it was something with me or with Pieter and the other person in our little group.
The problem was that I had gotten attached to her way too quickly.
After thinking about it for several months, I realised I needed to pull the plug. I cared too much about someone who barely showed up and who, if I’m being honest, I barely knew.
What made it stranger was noticing that other people I wasn’t nearly as attached to were showing up for me more.
At first I wondered if I had been trying to fill some kind of void or if I had hoped I had suddenly found a new best friend.
But I think it was more likely that I was trying to replace what I had lost with my old friend group.
I also started noticing how she treated the people around her and how she treated her boyfriend at the time. They’ve broken up now.
It made me question my original judgement of her.
Normally it takes me a while to care about someone that deeply, which made it even stranger that I had gotten attached so quickly.
Over several months I started taking some emotional distance so I could look at the friendship more clearly. Eventually, after more invitations went nowhere, I had enough.
I need people I can rely on.
Maybe if I hadn’t gotten so attached at the beginning, the friendship could have developed more naturally.
Eventually I told her that I felt she hadn’t really shown up or put much effort into the friendship, and that I was sorry, but I would rather not be friends anymore.
She didn’t really understand.
And somewhere in that conversation I realised just how much importance I attach to friendship and how much I value the people I actually call my friends.
Maybe that wasn’t completely fair to her either.
I apologised and explained why I needed some distance, but I kept the deeper part to myself.
The fact that I get attached to people.
The fact that I really love my friends.
The fact that, for a short while, she had been one of them.
And the fact that deep down I’m still hurt and fragile, and letting people in right now is a lot harder than I thought it would be.
I told her this might sound weird, but she was still welcome to text me anytime. I just would rather not see her for a while.
When I told Pieter and the other person in the group, they weren’t surprised. They even shared some of the same concerns.
They asked if I would still come to movie nights, dancing or other things if she was invited too.
Of course I would.
I don’t hate her, and people change.
She just isn’t someone I see as a friend right now. She’s someone I know, and that’s fine.
What some people casually call a friend, I would probably still call an acquaintance. I guess I just attach more importance to that word than most people.
But even when everything was said and done, I still felt annoyed with myself.
I know it was the right decision, but the thought that I hurt someone annoys me and eats at me, even when I know the decision itself was sound and that I handled it with respect.
Then a couple of days later something happened that made me question myself a little more.
I went out dancing to a party that happens every month during the dance season.
At some point I was chatting with a few people when a woman asked one of the guys if he could teach her kizomba. He looked at me and asked if I could teach her instead.
I told them I had no clue what I was doing. Whenever I try to dance kizomba, it mostly feels like swaying left and right.
I told her to come with me and showed her a few guys on the dance floor who were actually dancing kizomba and who I knew were nice guys she could ask.
Later I went back inside with her and saw someone else I knew.
I said, “Hey Johan, can you show her the basics of kizomba?”
Johan was already talking to someone, and I didn’t notice it right away. He started talking to the woman I had introduced.
The woman he had been talking to then said something along the lines of, “Hey, I was talking to him, you know,” and she was obviously annoyed.
And with honestly no care or empathy in the world, I looked at her and said, “Yeah... I don’t really care.”
She got angry.
I stayed calm and told her I still didn’t care.
At one point she was yelling and standing right in my face. I told her I didn’t know why she was screaming at me, but she was standing very close to me, so if she was planning on doing something, she should just do it or get out of my face.
She said she wasn’t going to do anything and stepped back.
Then she told me to leave and waved her arm at me like she was shooing me away.
I told her no, why don’t you go?
She started telling me to “be a man” and apologise.
I replied that I was a man, but I didn’t really understand what that had to do with anything.
Eventually she left.
Right afterwards people asked me what had happened, and I said I honestly didn’t really understand and couldn’t care less.
I remember that when I told that woman, “I don’t care,” it felt like someone had robbed me of all my emotions.
I felt incredibly cold.
Later that evening I explained what happened to a friend who is in the group with Pieter and me.
She raised her eyebrows and asked me if I was okay.
I said I wasn’t sure.
I just don’t seem to care lately.
But I knew I was at fault.
This isn’t how I usually am.
She said that honestly surprised her too.
At the time I had no clue how to make it right. I only heard the woman’s name later that same evening, and two days later I apologised to her by sending her a message on Facebook.
I’m not going to talk about her behaviour or repeat everything she said word for word because I honestly don’t remember it that well.
I remember mine.
I remember how I felt and what I said.
And I get it.
It was wrong.
I should have apologised when she said I interrupted her.
Instead I was deliberately being destructive in a community that has only brought me joy and warmth over the past year.
And honestly, I can be like that sometimes with strangers or people I don’t like.
Stone cold, direct, devoid of emotion.
Zero empathy.
But I haven’t felt like that in a while.
There is no excuse for what I did.
I was in a safe and social place.
There was no need to bare my fangs at someone who didn’t deserve it.
She wasn’t putting me or any of my friends in danger.
It was unprovoked.
I could have just played it off. I could have been a little more charming, a little more polite.
So I wonder, was it because of what happened with that friend and finally deciding to end it?
Or am I becoming indifferent to the world?
A few weeks ago Claire told me to be careful because I tend to burn myself out.
Was she right?
Am I getting burned out from all the social exposure and the life I’m currently living?
The friend I told about what happened said something similar. She told me that in the year she has known me I’ve changed a lot, and that I can’t expect to go from zero to 100 without hitting some bumps on the road.
And yet lately I’ve been pushing even harder.
I’m reading more, making schedules, and I even started running once a week, on top of dance class and going to the gym three times a week.
So I wonder, is it time to slow down, or do I keep pushing myself?
Whatever the case might be, I’ve parked that question for now.
Because in some way I already know the answer. I’ve already blogged about it. But there is a duality there.
I said I wouldn’t give up, but I also said I needed rest.
Maybe both can be true.
A while ago I decided to go to a concert, and I’m going alone. Honestly, I’m too lazy to ask someone to come with me, but I’m excited about it and I think I need some time alone anyway.
When I booked it, I told Claire about it because I think she introduced me to the band, or maybe it was the other way around. I honestly don’t remember anymore.
I was really excited when I told her.
If there was one person I would have loved going with, it probably would have been her because we talked about them in the past and we both used to listen to them.
But yeah. Our friendship isn’t quite what it was, and she’s expecting, so her safety and the child come first. That was more or less where our conversation about it ended too.
Maybe going alone is a good thing anyway.
I’ve spent so much time lately trying to go out, do more and be around people that maybe I need to remember that spending some time alone doesn’t have to mean I’m lonely.
Sometimes maybe I just need some peace and quiet.
Right now Thomas’s wedding is next, and the night before that I get some alone time at the concert.
I’ll miss dance class next week, but the trade-off seems necessary.
I’m also glad the past weekend was a calm one.
I needed the rest.