i don't want to know: reza

Last night, for the first time in a very long time, I got to see Reza and his family (albeit very briefly) and we watched the movie from his dad's wedding. It was fun times watching and remembering everything.

Actually, the adventure just getting there was hilarious; work kept me late, then when we did get there, Reza had gone somewhere. Asking his directions, I took them and ended up being almost 30 minutes out of the way, so we just regrouped back at his dad's house.

Brett and I got there first. Reza tried to ninja us, but failed and miserably. It was funny and cute even...

Anyway, not long after we got there, the subject of Maria came up. Maria is Reza's girlfriend. He really loves her and he misses her a lot right now. They used to date, broke up, and got back together. He normally doesn't do that sort of thing (getting back together with ex-girlfriends), so I imagine she's special. He showed me a picture. She's pretty. He said her lips were soft. He's excited about getting married to her one day. He wants me to come to the wedding.....

The sad thing about this is that I want to be happy for him and exuberant about it, but with him, I will never be able to allow myself that. Ever.

A few months ago, he was dating a girl. Her name was Ashley. She was cool and nerdy and into japanese and all this. He wanted us to get to know each other and become friends, so that's what I did. I exchanged phone info and FB info. Not a problem. They were happy, I was happy for them, the friendship grew. It was good... until they broke up. Now, because I'm a person that makes my own connections with people, I am still friends with some people even though they don't necessarily exist as a couple (like Alia and Devon or Jon and Pat) because I developed relationships with each of them as a person and left that relationship intact.

To be clear: I'm not one to stop being friends with people because they don't date.

Anyway, when they broke up, as per my normal, I kept talking to Ashley. Reza was bothered by this. This became very depressing for him and he started to feel like people didn't care about or respect him because they were talking to her.

Sorry, but in the middle of my writing, I had a small convo with someone and this came up:



It came to the point that I went to call him and during the convo, he flat out said that I had taken his feelings and threw them in the trash. All over this one girl. I thought about our friendship and decided I wanted to keep it, so I let my friendship with Ashley fade away, but I called him back and explained, in very clear, that if he met another girl after that, that I didn't want to know her name or anything else about her and I didn't want to meet her. Ever.

He said other things like "Well it was just this once..." or "Well, it's because she was like..." but I know him and most guys in general: this won't be the last time that happens. If he likes a girl and I develop that friendship with her, the moment something goes wrong, it will be treated as if I hate him if I continue to speak to her, even if only in a cursory way.

That hurts. It hurts that, although he swears that he isn't trying to be manipulative or controlling (and he isn't) that he would tell me -- someone that he says with his own mouth he considers to be family -- that I threw his feelings in the trash and I didn't care about how he felt. Logic be damned ("I get that you and her aren't talking, but she and I don't have a problem and you haven't said that she did anything bad to you, so I don't understand why you're upset..." "I shouldn't have to explain...." "...."), that's just how I was supposed to be.

Since that day, I can't allow myself to feel anything at all except for some mildly pleasant feelings and most of that is politeness. I am happy that he's happy, but I can't be fully happy about that. I can't be fully happy that he's dating. I can't be fully happy when he gets engaged. I can't be fully happy when he gets married. The reason I can't be fully happy is because I feel like I can't be a part of that area in his life at all; it would leave me open to hurt that I do not feel is worthwhile. Mind you, some kinds of pain in friendship are worthwhile, but not this one. Not ever. I said those words to him and I meant them: never again.

Never again.
Never.
Again.

It took all of myself control last night to avoid saying, "I don't want to hear about her. We talked about this. I don't want to know. I don't want to be at your wedding because God forbid you get a divorce. I can't do this..." Instead, I smiled politely and looked at the pictures and made a couple of perfunctory remarks and passed the phone to someone else.

*sigh* It sucks that this even happened... that is ever happened.

random thoughts

This is the kind of thing that pops up in my timeline when I feel mischievous. Read from bottom to top and enjoy.



I'm listening to The Last Straw at the office and thinking about things to increase my minimalism and pursue the "Hell Yeah" life. It's not that I'm not making gains: I am. I clean my room in less than 10 minutes and the entirety of that time is vacuuming. I keep things picked up, so I don't have to do that. I don't have much in my room, so even if I did have to pick things up, it wouldn't take long at all.

Aside from that, I want to become more passionate somehow. Live a bit closer to my faith in general and get some more forward motion with paring things down (yes, there's more that I want to pare down). I'll make some more notes on that when I write my next minimalism post.

I found some other interesting things online today. One of them was about donating to charity. Very interesting perspective in that article. You can read here. Very much worth sharing. Aside from that, reading that article eventually led me here. Dangerous site in a good way! This is awesome stuff and I love it already. I want to research it more and see what I find there. The suggestions they make here make a lot of sense. I mean, a lot of sense.

Aside from that, I have a lot going on and things to look forward to this week:

• talking to Marc Towler
• going to the airport (i hope i hope i hope i hope i hope....)
• going to the mountains this weekend with John (heaven.... pure heaven...)
• backlog on website projects (boo....)
  
• talking to Stephony (pronounced "Stef-on")

I've been on the online radar a little less, but I'll talk about that in a different post. Mom needs cash again, too. *sigh* Like I've said before: my family costs me too much money. Ah well...

persian parties

So I went to go visit Reza this weekend ♥.

First, we surprised him with coming up on Friday. We came in to a massive group of people dancing and partying until the late hours of the night until I was told that the late night festivities were over a wedding.

This caught everyone else by total surprise -- I just simply forgot in my excitement to get there. Oh well. No worries for me. We met the soon-to-be wifey and headed upstairs to laugh, chill, talk, etc. Of course, I got comfortable after a while of this and passed out. It was well late by then.

The next morning, we got up. I took a shower. More talking about a whole bunch of things. Charlene came up, but that passed without much being said.

Something came up, so Reza and Brett left to take of the matter. Should only take a few minutes...

...they returned four hours later. At the same time, I had already said we needed to be home at 5:30pm or so... That was when we left. As we are making our way, it is suggested that we take a 45 minute detour.

I was livid. I had things to do and I had made that a known fact.

Finally got home, the thing I had to do was rescheduled. I suited up for a wedding and made my way there. Fun times. Pictures were taken and there were three hours of dancing. Persian girls are cute, too, by the way.

Going on, we make our way home. We stop because I needed to drive as the driver was tired at which point I am told, "You said you would help me with gas..." I know what I said. What I don't know is why I am stopping here at 1:45am. I can give you a $10 bill and let you get gas at a later time. I want to go home... which again I had mentioned earlier. Oh well. Got $12 of gas and then I drove home, irritated, because I hate taking detours. I just want to get where I'm going. Mid-afternoon without plans? I'm fine. 2am when people start sleeping and I have to be awake to direct two tons of metal and other bits on wheels? Not so much.

Ugh!

Now I'm writing this because I'm too irritated to sleep and the irritant is sleeping here because they are too tired to drive home. >_<

At least Reza, his new mom, his brother and his dad were happy to see us and were glad we could make it to the wedding. We were also told we were amazing dancers. Maybe I should take proper dancing lessons for Persian dances :D

since the move...

I don't know what happened to Donovan. I think he got a job. For what's coming his way, he'll need it.

As for the other two, it will be a rough road. Baranda is already freaking out about everything and she and Morgan are fighting over everything under the sun including the puppies she decided to get because, again, they are tearing things up in the new apartment. She feels that he shouldn't say anything mean about them (even when logical) and also that he doesn't express emotion enough (yet she has been dating him for a year and some change).

I listened to Morgan talk about all of this this morning and listened to Baranda go on about bills last week. If it isn't one thing, it's another. I feel badly for them, but they jumped the gun and didn't listen so...

Oh well...

On the other hand, I have James as a roommate and that is going amazingly well. We get along and click well. He and I just sat down talking. I pop down to his room for cards now and then and he pops over here to chat and we both hangout downstairs and chat all the time or go out together pretty often (we are going to a party tonight).

What you sow is what you reap and all that.

I miss Reza a lot. I saw a lot of cool people last week and that made for a good day. Tiffany had a birthday and I chill with her for a while along with a lot of other people we both knew. Everyone there had to be like 7-10 years younger than me and drank a whooole lot more. Oh well, they loved me anyway.

I miss Reza

It was only a year ago (and some change) that we met. The meeting was rough to say the least, but from that grew a beautiful friendship. I remember when we walked through the woods to the stream to watch shooting stars.

I remember walking to the stream to talk, to hug, to share.

I remember when you locked me out of your room and wouldn't talk to me for days and I finally got a key to open the door so I could climb in bed, cuddle and wait for you to talk. Letters, watching bleach, evony, farmville...

I remember being with your family when we went to your grandmother's gravesite. Sitting out in the sun. Listening to you guys rehearse it all like it was yesterday. I remember seeing you for the last time in several months. I remember taking your dog tag so I could have you nearby.

We write and we call and we talk and we're planning to visit, but there are these moments that I miss you so much and all I want is for you to be here with me. I remember that convo, too.

I'm okay with you doing whatever and hanging out and working and all that. I really am, but sometimes, I get soooo jealous and I just want you to myself for a while. That's just how I feel.

I miss you so much right now. You have no idea (T_T)....

Everytime I hear this song, I think of you.

and continuing

I felt like a zombie yesterday after that blog. I was so upset that energy just left me. There are few things that are as hard on me as fighting with friends. -_-

As for anger yesterday, I retract that statement. I wasn't angry, but it felt like anger. I was hurt. There is a big difference and I'm not ashamed to tell you what every guy is going to lie to you about. Behind our pretend, we have feelings and because it is hard for most guys to show feelings, the affection we give, we fiercely protect. That said, if you hurt those feelings, we attack hard and will do whatever we can to hurt you back.

I won't be like that. I won't lie. I was hurt. I spent the rest of the afternoon in utter silence. My bosses became uneasy. I couldn't think about anything else but losing this friend I didn't want to lose. All day. I have a ton of their stuff at my house. Pondered taking it back to their house while they were at work.

When I got home, I cleaned my room. I talked in hushed tones. I avoided contact with anyone but a friend that had come over. I turned off my computer and didn't bother my phone. I was an absolute mess.

5:45..... 6:30..... it was workout time (between 6-10p everyday). I didn't know how I could even lift the weight when even the thought of breathing was a task. I looked at my friend. He asked what was on my mind. I couldn't even speak, but he knew. I got some headphones and listened to "I believe" by simian mobile disco.

I picked up weights and did lunges, then situps, then flutterkicks. My friend noticed what I was trying to do and helped me do punching drills for a while. I didn't feel 100%, but it got me out of zombie mode for a while, so I used that opportunity to talk about my feelings on the subject and he talked to me to try to calm me down a bit ("It's not that bad. Sometimes, he's just impatient about things...")

To sum up: he's upset because of a missed training day. I promised a friend I would ride with him out of town to take a friend home because he was tired and wasn't sure he could make the drive home alone. Rickey had come over, but I didn't know he wanted to train. We normally train on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, but lately he's missed a couple of training days because he's had to rest from working out on other days, so I didn't think anything of it when he said, "Hey I want to come over for a bit..." He does that all the time. If he had told me he wanted to train, I would have dropped everything to do it and he knows that. I guess that doesn't matter.

I told him I wanted to train today and asked him how his day at work was. He came over last night (for something else) and talked a bit and watched a movie (Transporter 2) with us (James, Brett, Q and I) and just chilled. Didn't say much except that he was training hard earlier that day, so he wouldn't be training that night (when he arrived no less....as opposed to beforehand) as he was sore all over.

I guess things will get back to normal, but it will probably take forever and it seems that the wrong thing at the right time will reset the friendship completely. Q says he is going to let things just go, but it's never that way. People don't forgive that easily. I wish they did, but in all honesty, it's never the same. Not for a while.

How will I handle that? I guess I'll just keep working out and training. Even if I have to do it on my own.

:: happier news ::

I wrote Reza a message and he wrote back. I love him to pieces. I really do. It was some small message only he and I know and I love that part of friendship. Anna commented on my last blog and I didn't even know she reads this thing. Always more than you would guess, I suppose. Speaking of that, she, John and I have a date for waffles soon I think. It may have to wait until after my trip, though.

where friends should be

I went to spend the night with Turk and fell asleep almost an hour later. We got there pretty late, though. It was lovely, though. I had a whole night's sleep and everything.

The next day, we had breakfast and was told that I needed to get dressed. Today was a special day -- they were going to see their grandmother's grave today and pay respects. We packed lawn chairs and iranian food and headed there. The music was cool on the way.

I listened to them talk about their favorite memories as we laid roses on the site. We offered dates and walnuts to every person that walked by. Everyone searched for appropriate words to say about varying things they loved about this woman. She loved everyone. She disciplined the kids. She tried to learn english. She loved to say "Thank you very very much..." When it came to my turn to ask about a memory, I asked what her favorite place to go was and what her favorite song was.

The song was a peaceful song and we let the song fill us up. Soon, we left and at that point, Ramin cried. Hard. I left the family to themselves for a moment and felt like a guardian angel watching them.

I thanked everyone for inviting me along and thought about this whole affair as we left. This is what it means to be a friend: to be laughter in joy and a tear in sorrow. They were kind to allow me to be there and I thank them for letting me share a little of their sorrow and a little of their joy.