The Perfect Distraction
So, here I am, back in Florida, and wondering where the hell I’m going from here, how long I will stay, and whether or not my boyfriend and I have a real shot of getting back together once all is said and done. I miss him so much. And what do people do when they miss their significant others. I believe we try to distract ourselves in one of two major ways:
1. Getting smashed and satisfying our need for physical interactions with members of the opposite sex, as a means of getting over or ignoring the painful feelings one has when they are away from the one that they love…. Or…
2. Smothering yourself in the attention of others; mainly friends, and trying to make new friends to ease one’s painful emotions of loneliness.
I suppose I could add a third:
3. Sulk in a deep pit of despair and hopelessness, escaping the bonds of reality for your own world of desperation; traveling the downward spiral of apathy until you waste away this mortal coil….
Ok…enough of that, I chose two, although number one doesn’t sound half bad.
I love my friends so much. I was greeted with warmth I had forgotten. It had to be re-forged in my mind that humans could be more that mere acquaintances ready to party with you, shooting alcohol, waiting for you to get tipsy enough to dance provocatively with them (I lied, I don’t need to be tipsy for that), then stumbling around the streets of a foreign land with others from the far corners of the globe only sharing this in common: “We came, we saw, we got drunk.”
Then you leave the party, go back home, and realize how much you missed sitting around with someone in such a deep conversation, your wavelengths scarily level with one another, feeding off the others thoughts and sending them your own in a perfect yin-yang of friendship and mutual respect under the stars; close to a fire with trees and night creatures, stars, and drums. It’s as if the world exists around you, this perfect world (without the pollution of Asia) and yet you are perfectly content to confine yourself to a bubble (which is usually exclusively your own) with this one other person whom at least for the time being seems to understand your every thought, emotion, and beat of your heart.
OK, so maybe not everyone has such an experience. This was my experience at FPG. Yes, there was some drinking. That did not matter. Yes, there was drumming. That was OK. Yes there was phenomenal ham. That was delicious. But my spiritual enlightenment was skewed in a manner purely my own. I was embraced by loving people who genuinely missed me and I met someone whom I can honestly say is the perfect distraction to missing Min. Min was not just my lover but my best friend while in Korea. True, our conversations were not as deep or as intellectual as I usually crave, but we could literally lay around talking for hours about absolutely nothing. He was my companion in a world where I had only casual acquaintances. Yet, there was even something missing. I think I opened myself up more to another in one weekend than anyone in my life, even if there’s more to tell. Through trying to find men who could fulfill me romantically and sexually, I had forgotten than I am an extremely intellectual creature and there’s nothing I hunger for more than for someone who can fulfill the less primal needs of rekindling my spirituality and feeding my intellect through conversation that satisfies my deep sense of intrigue, as well as my sarcastic sense of humor.
I don’t know what the future holds for me, or what I hold for the future, but I know that I was welcomed by far more than I had ever anticipated. I know that wherever I am in the world, this place, and these people are my home and my eternal friends; through ridiculous in-fighting and endless drama, we love and care for each other in ways some other people couldn’t begin to comprehend.
I love you all so much. (and I’m not soju-ed of sake-ed out right now)
Thank you, to my friends who are more than friends, my family, who are great friends, and to my newest soul-friend, Rook. You are fantastic and more than I could have hoped for in friends and family.
I farted. Nor really, but I can’t end this on so serious a note, so here’s an antectode:
One the bus out to Seoul, my boyfriend, Min, was telling me how he wasn’t like most other Korea men. He said to me, “I’m different. I’m eunuch.”
Oh and here’s a recent fortune cookie paper for you all to add “in bed” to:
“Your tongue is your ambassador.”