Love and other drugs

Hello, hello.
First of all: Happy New Year to you all. I hope 2011 will be a great year for everyone I know. Myself included. (And I think it will be.)
There hasn’t been much action on my blog in the last month, but that’s only because there has been so much happening in my life. Trust me, I’m still alive.
Three weeks and two days ago I met someone who completely changed my life. My past, my present, my future – it all looks entirely different to me now thanks to him.
(Warning: This story may contain sappy parts. Consider yourself warned.)
Here are the odds we beat: I’m from Norway; he’s from Upper Hutt. He lives in Christchurch; I live in Wellington. He’s in the army; I’m a student. I was visiting a friend in Upper Hutt; he had just come home for Christmas a few hours before. His best friend is my best friend’s best friend. He was on his way to a friend’s 21st with my best friend’s best friend; my friend and I were at her parents’ Christmas party, and got invited along to the 21st at 11pm.
I was tired and not intending to go, but said ‘What the hell, I’ll go’. We met when they came to pick us up at my friend’s parents’ place. Instant thought: ‘Holy shit. Hot guy. Tall guy.’
Turned out he is 6 foot 7. And in the army. That combination alone was enough to draw me to him. Then I discovered that he’s the nicest and most caring guy I’ve ever met, with a great sense of humour and an awesome playfulness. WINNER.
After the initial meeting we decided to meet again, and three days later he drove to Wellington to see me, and from then on we pretty much lived together for the three weeks he was on leave.
I’ve never been happier.
We went and did so much together, and there wasn’t a moment of boredom. I got to spend some time with him in Upper Hutt at his mum’s place, helping out with various jobs and exploring the place.
Then, of course, came the time for him to go back to his job in Christchurch.
I went out to Wellington airport with him to see him off, and it was so horrible saying goodbye. There were tears once he’d disappeared through the gate.
Now I’m counting down the days until I see him again, which will hopefully be on the 29th this month. Then I’m going down to Christchurch sometime in February, and we’ll go on a roadtrip down to Dunedin. Having something to look forward to helps me get through the days.
In other news: I’m moving to another flat before the end of the month, to live with friends. Tomorrow I’m going on a camping trip to Somes Island, which is the island in the middle of Wellington Harbour.
So much to look forward to, and all I can think about is how much I miss my amazing man down in Christchurch.

The clarity of seeing

 

Lately I’ve been doing a bit of soul-searching. And boy, have the epiphanies come falling at me like sweet, sweet rain after months of draught. This came about as a result of me feeling a bit lonely and ‘superfluous’, if you like. I wanted affection, unconstrained, of the kind reserved for that one special person. Or so I thought. After fooling myself with these thoughts for some time, I suddenly realised that I was wrong. Wanting something like that – that’s not me. That’s who society tells me I should be. Me – I want freedom; to chase across those green pastures, wind in my hair, a smile on my face. No sorrows, no worries, no attachments – just an abundance of life.

I realised that the only person whose company I will ever truly treasure is my own, and now is most likely the best time for me to enjoy that. I’m not saying that I will necessarily change as I grow older, but let’s face it; the possibility exists that somebody, someday, might want to constrain my freedom and have my wild personality around at all times. So I really ought to make the most out of this opportunity to be utterly selfish and do only what I think will be good for me, and not have to worry about the effects my actions can have on people that are close to me. Because there won’t be any. And this is what I want.

I discovered that I can have whatever I want. The snobbishness of that sentence is likely to make everyone who reads it reel backwards and call me a haughty bitch, but that’s okay. Nothing comes for free, and I put every ounce of effort I’ve got into achieving my goals. No one has ever been allowed to tell me what I can or can’t do; only I get to do that. And I say, reach for the stars, but bring a big fucking ladder if you want to entertain even the slightest hope of getting there. I think the fact that I’ve only ever really had myself to think about is what has led me this far, and that’s exactly what’s going to take me even further. I don’t want to share my life with anyone else, I’m too preoccupied at the moment; chasing after the arrows I shoot in front of me. Sure, I might get sidetracked from time to time, but I’m mainly on a steady course, and I know what I want.

Another thing that came to me is that the reason why I’m still in this position where it’s just me, living in my own world free of boundaries, possibly stems from the fact that despite me thinking that I wanted to be with someone, and have been searching for that right person, deep down I knew that it wasn’t what I really wanted, so it never happened. I believe in fate, and I find it fascinating how people just seem to appear in my life at times when I need them the most, change my life in some way, and then just as often disappear again. It’s funny, I always thought people exploited me – now that I think about it, maybe I’m the one exploiting other people. I should fit straight in with the people in the film industry, then.

Perhaps I’ve been reading too much Plato

First of all: Yes, I’m still alive. I survived the (whatever-it-was) infection and, even more impressive, the antibiotics treatment. I swear I’m still feeling groggy and a little nauseous from taking those pills. Other than that, I’m fine.

Now to what I want to discuss in this blog entry – I have some pretty far out notions about the way things happen in life, and let me just warn you now, that if you have a restricted imagination, you might as well stop reading here.

For those of you who are as open-minded as me, I would like to invite you on a short journey through my beliefs, paying particular attention to fate. I strongly believe that things happen for a reason, and that some things are simply inevitable. They are just meant to happen. Such was the case with me ending up in New Zealand. There was definitely a force beyond my control that led me to this marvellous country. Despite all the things I thought about prior to leaving, about how scary it would be; how difficult to be financially independent in another country, on a different continent, on the other side of the world; how I would miss people and the familiarity of Norway, and so on - there was nothing that could hold me back. And you know, it was only ever NZ I had my mind set on. Nowhere else. After my first stay in NZ my life had changed for good, there is no denying that. I had turned onto a new path, one that would see me return to Aotearoa 18 months later, and after I’ve been here for another 8 months I have not regretted coming back once.

What made me think about fate today was a funny episode that took place when I went to the supermarket this afternoon. For the first time in about a month I went to Pak’n’Save, which lies in a suburb of Wellington called Kilbirnie. To get there I have to catch the bus, which takes almost half an hour; that’s why I don’t go there very often (only when I have lots to buy, because it’s the cheapest place).

So I’m at Pak’n’Save, just strolling down between the aisles, when all of a sudden this guy I’m walking towards looks up from his trolley and catches my eye - so I smile at him, and he smiles back at me, and then he says ‘Oh, hi! How are you!’ Completely taken by surprise by this friendliness, I manage to say ‘I’m good, thanks, how are you..?’ He then realises that I actually don’t know who he is, and lets me know that we met last Saturday when we were both out on town, and I remember (after all, I was completely sober that night, whereas he was, as he told me today, ‘absolutely trolleyed’). He was really nice, though, and gave me his number and all. When I met him at the supermarket he apologised for the way he behaved last weekend, but really he was one of the few decent (drunk) guys I’ve talked to out on town on a Saturday night. So we chatted for a bit, and then we kept walking in different directions (although when I turned into the next aisle he was walking down it in the opposite direction, so we had to pass each other again. Awkward.).

Anyway, the point is that I have this (undesirable?) ability to read way too much into these sorts of incidents. Chance meetings, you know. Why do they happen? Has fate got something more in store for us? I realised just the other week that I believe that if something is meant to happen between two people who (may or may not) like each other, then fate will make sure that they meet, to make them realise what they want. The funny thing is that I was kind and gave this guy my number last Saturday as well, because he suggested having a coffee one day, and I (almost) never pass up on an offer of coffee, but nearly a week later I still hadn’t heard from him. And then I just randomly run into him at a supermarket I almost never go to, and he remembers me.

What made this whole event that much more intriguing is the fact that it’s the second time something like this (a chance meeting) has happened to me in two weeks. A fortnight ago I was out on town to watch a rugby match and a football game, and hoping to meet someone (not anyone, someone as in a specific person) afterwards. That person kind of got stuck somewhere on the way, so after a lot of waiting I joined a group of people at a pub, and decided to go with them when they went to another place. Guess who I just happened to run into on the way, in the middle of a crowded sidewalk? You got it, the person I’d been waiting for all night. You need to be able to imagine the overpopulated streets of Wellington on a Saturday night, especially after two wins by NZ sports teams on the very same night, to be able to fully appreciate the awesomeness of running into the one person you wanted to see, but had given up on. It’s true what they say; as soon as you stop looking for what you want, it finds you.

So if I had any participating readers, I guess this is where I would ask for your advice and comments and thoughts, but seeing as I don’t, I’ll restrain myself from doing that. Instead, I will apologise for the lack of introducing other beliefs I hold about how and why things happen, as it’s getting really late and I haven’t actually thought about anything else to write about than fate, so I’ll leave that for another time and place.

Maybe I’ll read a bit more of Plato’s ‘Timaeus’ (that’s where the original account of the legend of Atlantis comes from, for those uneducated souls out there who didn’t already know that) before I go to sleep (that’s bound to put me to sleep straight away). Actually, I quite enjoy it. It’s ironic, isn’t it, how I despise my philosophy course but read Plato for fun.

 

“Let us stay up all night and watch the stars fall down around us;

as the world breaks we shall dance in the golden showers, invincible.”