One Year (and something odd days) Later

So I realized something today, realized it because of two things. First, I still follow the ISA facebook page, and someone posted "Safe travels to Prague, Fall 1 students!" and when I was here a year ago, it was in the Fall 1 program. Second, it's Sara's birthday. Happy Birthday, Sara! But this is important because Sara was midway over the Atlantic on her way here when she turned 21. She is now 22 (and old). She was (and still is) a big part of me getting comfortable here, so her birthday is kind of a big deal, as a milestone. I wanted to write a deep and profound post about all the big changes that have happened in the last twelve months, but you don't want to read that. Instead, I'm taking the first real post from my blog after I'd been here for about a week, and noting it to death with the added benefit of hindsight. I'll try to be funny, I promise.

Prague, 9/8

I’m starting to realize something about myself that people have been telling me for years – I take myself entirely too seriously. I'd like to think this has changed. Rather than thinking I'm so grown up, and I have all the answers, and all my shit is so very together, I've gotten much better at admitting I'm a giant child, I have none of the answers, and roughly half my shit is sort of together. It's all become very tongue in cheek, this "adulthood" thing. That's what happens when you move to a different country and realize that all the things you thought you wanted, you don't actually want. You want an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT set of things, and as you have laid absolutely zero ground work for getting them, you now have the wonderful gift and terrible curse of having all the fucking options in the world. Do I take myself seriously now? Perhaps, but where I had been Juliet, I am now Mercutio. And we all know how he ends.

Anyway, journal entry. It’s Saturday, which I’m counting as the last day of my first week here, which also means I have only written twice prior, and I really ought to get better at that. The end result might be that I start carrying my large journal to write by hand in, and some day when they collect my memoirs for progeny, they’ll have to get this period of my life from two places. Yeah, that never happened. But that’s the price they’ll have to pay for what I’m sure is a riveting hilarious tale. Even if it hasn’t happened yet. Oh, just you wait, sugar. Just a preview what you're in for: piercing, porn mat, dating a local, getting dumped on a monthly basis, chemical experimentation, psychedelic 80s literature, gulags, Auschwitz, drinking wine with a bunch of Austrians your mom's age, and ANIME.

So despite the fact that I have a flair for the literary  melodramatic – actually, let’s be honest and call it a religious devotion to the literary and an adamant belief that life must fit inside dramatic tropes or none of it would make any type of sense. Yes, because if literature does anything, it makes sense, right, Chekov? Anyway, despite being inclined to fit my life into a five act structure, I can’t really think of how to put what I’m doing into a narrative. I mean, I could narrate the things that I’m doing – trips to see tourist locations, mostly – but that isn’t horrendously interesting or wholly unique. Wrong. And I’m spamming the shit out of my Facebook with pictures I’ve taken, so I’ll remember the locales even if I don’t remember the conversations I had with tour guides or how much admission cost. I think, really, the pictures will suffice for the grand things I do – concerts, tours, art exhibits – of which there have already been a lot. I was dumb. The best part of traveling is the conversations you get in, not the photos and the brochures. But this journal/blog I think is going to chronicle what it’s like being a single HA!, white American young lady of mostly sound mind  And again I say HAAAA! and healing heart in a foreign city. Healing heart. If only it were that simple. I don't say that because between writing that and writing this there's been another break up; after all, the hurt The Ex (formerly referred to on this blog as Lord Doucheface) inflicted was exponentially greater than anything The Czech could have ever aspired to. I say that because "healing heart" carries for me so many deep connotations I'm just now starting to figure out. I wish I could adequately explain it to you, but the closest I think I can get is this - the difference between healing heart and healed heart is perspective, personal revelation, and love. Love of oneself, and admitting that nothing in this life is ever 100%, that the gap between reality and perfection is entirely up to us. The reason I was healing then and am healed now is then I was unwilling to love anything other than the familiarity of what ached, while now I am willing to love the unfamiliarity of finding what lies between the aches (which usually means loving myself despite myself). See - perspective!

Christ, this is getting less and less funny. Quick, what do you call a crocodile in a sweater vest? And in-vest-a-gator.

So what is that like, really? Well, I covered last entry what living in my apartment is like. To recap, pretty but also heartbreaking. Again with the melodrama. I ended up loving that apartment. I miss speaking Russian, and while there is a girl working at the program’s office from Ukraine who seems incredibly eager to speak Russian with me, I’m also intimidated. I'm so dumb. I lost all my Russian because I was too scared to freaking talk to someone. She’s a native speaker and I think I can count how many verbs I know on one hand. Also, not a fan of the Czech language. It’s ugly, no one speaks emphatically, and I can’t differentiate a Czech accent from German. I miss Russian. I miss it a lot. Czech, for the record, isn't exactly my favorite language - ugly seems harsh now.

So a funny thing is happening to me here – I’m getting stared at all the time! Everywhere I go! Maybe this was happening to me in Denver and I just didn’t notice because in a car no one gives a flying fuck about much of anything, and other than driving and work, the only time I was out of the house was to be with friends. But I find that here, ESPECIALLY on the Metro, I catch people staring at me. It's not you, sugar, it's the Czech Stare. They stare at everyone, it means next to nothing about you. And my Mom is saying, “It’s 'cause you’re stunning!” and I’m like “mreh, you have to say that. If I’m ugly it’s a bad reflection on your genes.” So I thought it was because I’ve taken to glowering and wearing red lipstick. Nothing really says “Fuck off” like a good old fashioned glower and red lipstick. Red lipstick, while stunning on a face as pale as mine, also kind of implies I’m willing and able to make you my bitch. It’s not true, at least not in a physical sense, but they don’t have to know that. You're so vain, you probably think this song is about you. You're so vain... And yet today, I wasn’t bedecked as I usually am here – professional, severe, and BLACK EVERYWHERE I do still wear black. I'm like if Neil Gaiman's wardrobe fucked the Clerks cast and then traveled back in time to the 50s – but was wearing white shorts and a t shirt. I also was glower-free, as I had a very good day that makes me think I might have found a niche, this early on. I remember this day. I was beaming like an idiot because it was the second real day I'd spent with the Czech I was about to be romanced by. Still a fond memory, even a year and three breakups later. It's hard not to be charmed by having a sexy black leather jacket thrown over your shoulders when you shiver. If you know me, you know it takes me a long while to find a niche. Still true. Anyway, no glower, no lipstick, and I’m still getting looks. Do I really look that American? Bob Saget. I need to reintroduce this into my vocabulary.

So, it’s probably worth mentioning what this program is like, since I’ve been getting a lot of questions. No you haven't. It’s put on by an independent company, International Study Abroad, or ISA, that coordinates with Charles University. So they do all the touristy stuff with us, and then we take classes at Charles University, which I’m pretty sure they also coordinate, though don’t teach. The first two weeks we take an intensive Czech language course, boring, no one cares which I am frustrated with because it’s moving very slowly and I don’t think I know how to say anything. We take that until 2:30 in the afternoons, and while there’s usually something arranged for us after class, when I have the time I’ve been going to Old Town Square and haunting a couple art museums and churches. Despite having more or less expunged religion from my body like a bad cold, these churches are taking my breath away. And on the weekends, though not every weekend, they take us on excursions to the cool stuff we couldn’t or wouldn’t necessarily prioritize less boring. Today we went to Kutna Hora, which at one point was the second largest city in Bohemia after Prague. Now it’s mostly a tourist town, with a stunning Gothic church, a medieval silver mine, and another gothic church that isn’t as big or as pretty, but is decorated almost exclusively with human bones. Check the pictures, they do more justice to all that than I could. BORING. SO EFFING BORING. This paragraph, not Kutna Hora. I recently went back with Ian and Casey.

But let me take this opportunity to talk about the people running the program, who provide really the only semblance of structure for me right now. And if you know me, you know I love structure. Also still true, though I've gotten better at dealing without it. So there’s Daniella, the program director. Very sweet, very helpful, always smiling, calls us her ISA babies. Super sweet, I think she's intentionally oblivious to how much trouble the students really should have been in. Then there’s Lucie, who is Daniella’s assistant and the one we go to with silly problems. She’s also very sweet, and sometimes its hard to distinguish where Lucy ends and Daniella begins. I’m sure as I get to know them better they won’t be a single entity in my mind. There’s Tamara, the one from Ukraine, who is (again) very nice and has already given me loads of suggestions for things to do with my spare time. She’s painfully shy, though, and I’m not sure if that’s because Ukrainians play things close to the vest or if she’s a shy person. Also an artist and musician, and when you finally get her to talk, she's hilarious. And then there’s Martin, who is an anomaly both because he is male and because if you were to look at him on the street, you wouldn’t guess he’s 27 and has a Masters already. You would, however, guess he is a big, fat nerd just like me, but with twice the knowledge and half the pretentiousness. As I’m sure you can imagine, I’ve heard a great deal of nerdery in a Czech accent from him, which is like a little slice of home. If I knew any Czech people at home.

I think the only other thing worth mentioning at this point is how much time I spend alone here. I spend a good deal of time alone at home – you probably know that – but it’s in a place I’ve grown up in. Also, how to be comfortable with being alone was a hard learned lesson, but now I really do prefer to be alone. Alone and happy with my own thoughts is better than in a group worrying about what people think of me. And alone and doing what I want is better than in a group doing things I don’t want. Really, I think it makes the time I spend with people more special for me because I’m there because I want to be, not because I’m terrified of being alone. In Prague, that’s translating into a lot of nights at home with my book and a mug of tea because I don’t like going out, and I don’t mind so much when I see my peers hung over the next morning. But sometimes being left out – even if it’s my own doing – stings a little. But even as lonely as I might feel, lonely is not the same as miserable, and I know I would be miserable clubbing and drinking and making a general ass of myself. This is interesting to read, a year later, when I do panic over being home alone and I do have a job as a club promoter. I can't decide if I lost something or gained something in the transition, because while I know now that I'm capable of being commanding everyone's attention in the club or bar, I still don't like it except occasionally. Perhaps the difference is that then, no matter what happened, I was going home in four months, and now, I have no ticket booked for the way back. But the real difference, and I know this with every fiber of my being, is that the great weight of the hurt done to me last summer hung like a weight around my neck, preventing me from really looking at myself, looking at who I was, and how to make myself happy. Whatever else has happened this year, the anchors around my neck aren't so heavy I can't swing my head to look in the mirror or look at others. What I really need to do is find someone in Prague whose idea of a good night is nursing a whiskey on the rocks in a bar and watching Firefly. And then going to an art museum in the morning. That’s an awfully specific set of demands, though, and I’d probably just settle for one of them. I did find that person, though instead of whiskey it was tea, and art museums were his indulgences into what I wanted to do.

A couple observations:

· Prague women are stunning, especially the ones my age. Prague men… well. Let me clarify this, because it's been misinterpreted. Prague women are still stunning, they never stopped being stunning. Prague men are, with a few exceptions, ugly. They are ill dressed, smelly man-children. And even if they aren't poorly dressed or smelly, they are probably still man-children 
· The temptation to get another piercing or tattoo is mounting, as I feel like my eyebrow spike is becoming a little too tame. A sensation that stems directly from how stunning the women are here. If they’re going to be pretty, I might as well be pierced. Another alternative is getting a side cut. I’ve always wanted one, and my hair is long enough on top. Or rather, tall enough, as it’s still doing the anime poof. Got them both within I think two weeks of writing this. Still have the side cut, though the second eyebrow piercing rejected. I'll get it re-pierced at Christmas. Also, in February I got the three extra ear piercings, and in June I got the tattoo. So I'm all body-modded up at this point.
· Food here is so starchy, I have to go out of my way to eat anything fresh and green. Oh god, still true. I think the Prague golem was actually a large Jewish dude who just needed a glass of water and a salad.
· I miss Tokyo joes. OH GOD, TOKYO JOE'S, I MISS YOU SO.

Break Up Advice (Though God Knows I'm Hardly Qualified)

So in the last year, I got dumped twice – actually in a six month period, last year, I got dumped twice. And both by… males? Calling them men sounds strange in my mouth, but they certainly weren’t just “boys.” Creatures, we’ll call them creatures. Both times I got dumped, it was by creatures I (at the time) saw myself spending the rest of my life with, and they both made really big impacts on me. These were not light relationships, and as such they were not easy break-ups. And they were both very, very different. But I’ve been plenty of vocal about all this, so we don’t have to rehash it. Enough time has passed.

Oddly, though, as soon as I got my feet back under me (romantically, I mean. Every other area of life, I am currently falling on my face every two steps), a whole slew of my best friends (of which I have many, because I am blessed) got dumped. I won’t air their dirty laundry here because that’s not my business, but it happened to a lot of you guys in a really quick succession. And I remember really distinctly after seeing a movie with one of these friends, the friend asking me “How do you know you’re better? When does it get easier?” I’ve gotten this question from all of you, in one form or another, and I’ve asked it about a thousand times myself before that. I’m not a guru on this shit – I don’t know what I’m doing any more than you guys do, but I want to help you. So I’ve compiled basically an open letter of break-up advice. I hope it’s helpful, but at the very least, know this: I love you, you can do it.

First, do not beat yourself up. This is not your fault. And if it is your fault, rather than slipping into self-loathing, take active, healthy steps towards fixing the problem. But even then, it isn’t really your fault, not to the degree you think it is. You were the best person you can be – and I know this because I was watching all of you grow and put genuine effort into your relationships – and they still decided to walk away. That’s not your fault, that’s them being an idiot. Maybe they’ve got commitment issues, maybe how together your shit is makes them jealous, or most likely, there was a maturity gap between the two of you. But it’s not your fault, so stop laying in bed and saying “If I’d _________, we wouldn’t have broken up.” Nope. That is not how that works. And doing that is not going to make you feel better, so don’t.

Second, it doesn’t get easier quickly enough for you to notice. You don’t go to bed one day miserable and wake up the next morning totally fine. You don’t have the movie Aha! Moment where suddenly your perspective changes and it’s all better. Life, though it tends to cut itself into vignettes, is not a 30 minute episode of How I Met Your Mother, an Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros song isn’t going to play, you’re not going to go running through the rain, and there’s not going to be a Big Moment where suddenly the hurt is gone. And I know that’s awful. You hate sitting there, trying to pretend you’re okay, when really you feel like there’s a hole in your chest cavity. You sleep too much, you eat too little, you can’t pay attention to much of anything, and you constantly catch yourself trying desperately hard not to think of the person who hurt you so badly, and you can’t imagine ever feeling okay again. But it’ll happen, I promise. Eventually, and I wish I could give you a time frame, but I can’t – eventually, you’ll notice you’re sleeping less and eating more, you’re more interested in the things and the people around you, and the hole is gone. It’s a slow process, and you won’t notice it’s happened until months, or maybe even years later, but eventually, I promise, it’ll stop hurting like this. And the best way, I’ve found, to speed up the process, is to stay busy doing things you like doing, not the things you think you should be doing.

Third, don’t over indulge in something… for too long. The first chunk of this, when tomatoes make you cry because that person always ate tomatoes on Tuesday with salt and ranch dressing and you thought it was gross but now tomatoes make you lose your shit, over indulge in something, anything! to keep your mind busy. Spend as much time at work, with friends, in the gym, (probably not at the bar), reading a book, playing a game, anything, as possible. Stay busy. But eventually you’ll get exhausted by whatever it is you’re over indulging in, and that means you’re past the hardest part. At this point, go back to living a well balanced life. You’re not going to feel better yet, but at least you’ll be back to pretending you can function normally.

Fourth, don’t rebound. Don’t use another human being to fill the void, don’t jump from relationship to relationship because you will never catch your breath. And if you catch yourself doing that, get out before you do too much damage to yourself or another human. If you are constantly jumping from one person to another, it means you're using people for the function they can serve, not loving them for who they are. There are people in this life who never figure that out, probably because they're so consumed by the excitement of the chase and the misery of the break up that there is never any calm period during which they can figure out who they really are and what they really want. Don't be that guy (in the gender neutral sense) because I've dated enough of you to know that A) you're dumb and B) you're really, really dumb. And I've been that guy and I've watched you guys date that guy and also act like that guy, which just confirms points A and B.

Fifth, cut off the creature that dumped you. Not forever, just until you’re ready. And then when you think you’re ready, wait like another six months. But trying to stay friends, trying to keep them in your life, just lets the wound fester. Fast and brutal is better than slow and aching, like a Civil War leg amputation. Delete their number and their Facebook, delete their family, all of it. They’ll try to stay in contact, they always do. They try to keep the door open, because that way they can change their mind, and they feel like less of a douchecannoe. Close the door, and let them feel like a douchecannoe, because they are one. And part of this – no break up sex. If you cared about them this much to be this devastated, sex is going to be a violent chemical accelerant on the emotional explosion you already are.

Finally, I wrote this to one of you (you know who you are), and I really liked it because I’m vain, so I’m editing it to be more generally applicable.

Hey -

I'll always have time your crises. At the very least cause I owe you for dealing with Break-Up Cydney, at the most because I care about you.

When we girls (can't speak for dudes) find someone we're head over heels for in all the most intense ways, we bend over backwards to make it work, the whole time forgetting you can't tie yourself in knots to be with someone forever.

The best loves are not the loves that hit us like a bolt of lighting on a sunny day. Those bolt-of-lightning loves are the loves that change us, remodel our insides, and we either become better for them or we carry their scars for the rest of our lives. But the best loves are the ones that sneak up on you, the ones where you wake up one day and realize that the rest of your life is sitting next to you in the bar making a joke, not waltzing across the room making sex eyes at you. Movies lie to us, girls especially, and tell us that we have to change ourselves to fit into the hole this bolt-of-lighting has made in ground.

I don't doubt there was love in your relationship, but there’s a difference between being IN LOVE with someone instead of real, lasting love. Being IN LOVE is not only impermanent, it's not as real. It's still real, just... to a less degree. It's like the Santa Claus of love. Believing it's real makes the magic, and that's worth it in itself, but eventually you realize it won't do for the rest of your life. For at least a couple of you, the creature woke up to that reality, and it's sad they went about dealing with it this way, but try not to focus on that. Focus on the fact that you did the best you could, and eventually a you are going to see that and not need to bend yourself into a pretzel to feel worthy of someone – and vise versa. You’ll find someone else who doesn’t need to be bent into a weird shape to fit with you.

Also, for now you need to burn the bridge, and I’ll tell you why I do it so you understand. I cannot - CANNOT - stay friends with my exes, but they always want to. I just can't go back. I can't go back to the way things were before, and I can't pretend I never loved them so intensely it lit up every corner of my life. My mom says I act, and therefore should treat myself, like an alcoholic to these boys. I get addicted to having them, really having them, and the only way to not let it destroy me is to eliminate access to the addiction. Just like an alcoholic can't have even one drink, I can't have even one conversation. For now, I think it’s safest for you to do this, too.

I hope this helps. And you need to know this: you are not dateable. You are not the person creatures fool around with or have flings with. You are commit-able. You're they one they fall in love with over a slow period of time, then bring to their cousin's wedding cause they're single, then realize they don't want to go to weddings with anyone else. The problem is, most creatures don't realize they want that or deserve that. They want assholes or bitches because they're exciting and because they think its the best they can do. It's frustrating for you, but you are going to go through this a couple times until the creatures around you realize that they deserve a nice person and learn to love themselves enough to let you love them, too.

Be safe,

-C

The Street Violinist

Remember when this blog used to be funny? Me either.

So if you've been following my blog for a while, you're familiar with my continual hunt for what it is I believe in. If you're not, you can find a couple examples here and here, and then also in the majority of my posts from the last, oh, year. I still don't know where I stand, but something pretty cool happened today. Those of you who believe in a zombie carpenter and his PLAN (which I often imagine on spreadsheets, probably in no small part because when I think "paternal" I think of my financial analyst father) will immediately shoe horn what happened into your belief system in a very easily explainable way. Those of you who are devoutly atheist will do the same (shoe horn, I mean), and those of you who are, like me, devout agnostics (at least now I've come up with a term for myself - I really, adamantly, am not sure) will also probably just go  "huh." But me... this I'm writing down so I can hold on to it.

Today, I had a job interview. A demo lesson with a language school, to be precise, and I'd written the lesson plan to be used at least a week and a half ago. So I wasn't very familiar with it, and it went jerkingly, at best. Also, I boarded an incorrect example of the future simple "going to" construction, and then when I caught my mistake, wrongly labeled the present continuous as the present simple. Then, to make the whole thing worse, my TTT (teacher talking time - IS BAD THING) was abysmally high, and I mistook "I failed the test because I hadn't studied enough" for the 3/2 conditional. Which, if you're familiar with English grammar, you know is really really wrong. Despite all this, the woman seemed to imply I would be moving on to the next stage of the job application process (which I've effectively just jinxed). My mood, leaving the office, was not the best.

But Prague is Prague, and I had no other plans, and a thunder storm imbued with the greatest wrath of Thor (maybe not greatest wrath, but probably akin to "MY HARD DRIVE GOT WIPED BY A VIRUS! CURSE YOU, PIRATE BAY!") cooled down the city for the first time in about two weeks, making walking the long way home not only feasible, but pleasant.

Now, most of the time when I walk anywhere, I have my headphones on, which are not sound cancelling. So in the lull between songs, I can hear what's happening on the street. A new song on my phone was about to start when I passed by an Italian violinist. I know he was Italian because in addition to being olive colored, he was wearing very nice shoes. Don't point out the logic, I'm sticking with it. I paused, both my walk and my phone, to listen to the last couple of bars of the song he'd been playing. He finished, and I would have moved on like the rest of the crowd, but I paused for some reason. I'd like to say it was a premonition, but more likely it was that I like classical music and he played very well. The crowd passed on to the next street performer, leaving me standing in the street, waiting for him to start. We made eye contact, and the violinist... he smiled. Smiled like he knew exactly what kind of day I was having, and had just the thing I needed. Setting his bow back on the strings, he started playing Ave Maria. Having not grown up Catholic, I don't know why there's about a thousand hymns called Ave Maria that all sound different, but this was the exact arrangement I have on my iPod, the one I queue up when I'm craving calm in Latin, days like today when I'm trying very hard not to kick myself over something stupid I did. And while I don't speak even a little Latin, I was able to fill in the basic sounds in my head while he played. As he played, too, he kept looking up with that smile, like he knew, he knew, exactly what effect this song was having on me. A crowd gathered, of course, but the whole time it was as if he was playing only to me.

Song finished, he bowed, and I dropped a fistful of coins into his case and I finally moved on.

Please don't write what you think this was. Because I don't care to hear "Oh! A Tender Mercy!' or "Oh! A Miracle!" or "Oh! A Random Occurrence Your Brain Is Ascribing Meaning To!" Don't wanna hear it. But those of you who worry about me, and I'm blessed in that you are multitude, know this: I'm fine, because little things like this keep happening. I'm not coming home, not quite yet, because every time reality weighs a little too heavily, Prague reminds me that we choose which reality it is we live in, and she'll let me choose a fairy tale if I want it.