Recently a horoscope for my sign read that the Mercury in Retrograde will bring out ‘ghosts of the past’ and I’d have to deal with them. I don’t normally listen to horoscopes, nor do I believe in them to the point of letting them control my life. But if there’s one lesson I learned from translating Ancient oracle’s prophecies, it’s that I need to interpret what’s being said according to my situation and not take it literally.
But I guess I may be too obsessed with change. I don’t like it when I stay the same and I let my behavior, my passions, my interests, my physicality and my social circle change over time. As I’m always looking forward, I take each chance I have for change – whether it is internal or external (i.e. change of workspace, environment etc.). Considering that everybody else refuses to move on, to change themselves, I don’t think I’m in the wrong. But sometimes I seem to be too radical. I’m young however, I can afford to change. That is mandatory for my survival.
But why am I like this – more importantly, why am I the only one like this? I was recently contacted by a not-so-old friend of mine, a friend and peer from High School, whom I used to be close to. We used to dwell in our pain together, whine and cry together, but as I was growing up, it didn’t seem like she was. She’d always been childish and self-centered. Despite being very ambitious, I couldn’t see where she wanted that ambition to take her. Of course, as teenagers do, one of our cries were about not being romantically involved with anyone. But if I wanted a partner, she wanted a care-giver. After we graduated, she went to study abroad and I stayed.
Going into studying higher education, I was looking at my peers, realizing that all those traits I used to whine about can’t determine my future – so I let go of them. I did occasionally look into them, but still I didn’t let them take over. Me and her continued to text each other every now and then, gradually going completely silent. I know distinctly when I decided to let go.
After a while, she met someone and they started dating. Pretty soon after that, every message she sent ended with ‘and then I went out with my boyfriend’: she went to the library and then went out with her boyfriend; she attended lectures and then went out with her boyfriend; she went to a party and made out with her boyfriend; she went to the store and then went to see her boyfriend. As happy as I could be for her, I couldn’t help but feel like she was in a way telling me that she has something that I don’t. Are we in kindergarten? I thought we were supposed to grow out of that childish-envy phase.
She found a job while studying outside our country and it seemed like a well-paid one. I don’t see the point in disclosing sums, but she didn’t miss a chance to tell me how much she made in a week. She lived in a dorm, so expenses and costs were cut low for her. She didn’t travel, didn’t have a car… And her mother still worked two jobs to support her student-life all the way over there.
She never once told me about having successfully passed an exam, or being proud of a paper she had written and submitted, or doing anything significant at work that would make her stand out, or what brings her and her boyfriend together, or if she wants her mother to quit one of her jobs – or anything that is actually important or at least I’d care about. Because being a friend is not about listening to everything, but it’s about knowing what to share. Everything she said was about what she does with her boyfriend; never what she does herself.
All of that bragging hurt my feelings a lot, because it made me feel less grown and made me question if I had the wrong priorities in life. I do write a lot about being single and what a problem that is to me, because it helps me learn what is actually important to me and what isn’t. She made me feel like a teenage magazine. Now she’s trying to reach out to me, wanting to hangout, since she’s back home for a while. But what would my motivation be? I’m no longer a teenager and don’t want to listen to her bragging about events that would be appropriately important for a 12-year-old. And we’re twenty-something. And I also want to be heard.
It doesn’t matter what I learned from high school and what I read in the horoscope. Still the situation is pretty much a literal one. I shouldn’t let a past problem make room for itself in my present; I’m no longer hosting one-way conversations. I do not want to hangout with her.
TOMMY EXPLORES THE WORLD 