A Karmic Bitchslap
I am writing this as part of the The Best of 2009 Blog Challenge.
Today’s topic: Challenge. Something that really made you grow this year. That made you go to your edge and then some. What made it the best challenge of the year for you?
I’m in a diner. It’s a crisp Sunday morning. I’m happily plowing through a plate of scrambled eggs when I look up and gaze dreamily out the window.
And then I see him. Outside.
My heart stops. All the blood in my body begins to coagulate into an enormous lump in my chest. Scrambled eggs dangle from the edge of my bottom lip.
I can’t believe he’s here. How could this happen?
I don’t understand.
“Wait!”
We’re standing next to my car. It’s getting late and he’s starting to walk away. I really like this guy and I really want to kiss him, but I’m not entirely sure he wants to kiss me.
So I trick him.
“Wait! You’ve got something…”
I point at his face.
He turns and walks towards me and when he least expects it, I quickly and clumsily plant a kiss right on his cheek, barely missing his eye.
I start laughing and run back to my car. He laughs too and then later asks when he can see me again. We make vague plans. I get excited.
And then nothing.
And then this.
This odd, strangely synchronous meeting in a diner weeks later. Not having heard a word from him. Nothing.
I’ve combed every molecule of self-doubt, but I have no answers. I don’t know what to say or do. I want to bolt. But he has since sat down in a booth with his friends. And I will have to walk right by him just to leave this place.
I take a deep breath and stand up. I start walking and look right at him. I don’t know what to expect. I can’t even imagine what words could possibly be exchanged. Where would I even start? How in the hell am I even going to form words? Do I even remember how to speak English? Where am I anyway?
I reach the edge of his table and then…
Nothing.
He doesn’t even look up. Instead, his eyes are focused intently on the menu in front of him.
I should have just let it go at that. But, of course, this has been one of my biggest challenges of 2009. Letting things go.
I contacted him a few weeks later to ask him what happened. Apparently, because I like to torture myself. But also because I mean, I just wanted to know and in some weird way salvage what little friendship we had left.
You see, because of him, I started taking Tai Chi. I knew he had his own contemplative practice and it seemed to help him. So, I thought, I should try something too. Maybe it will help me. And it did. And I am sincerely grateful for that (well, that and for introducing me to Metalocalypse).
It pretty much ended there. But that wasn’t the worst part.
The worst part was realizing that I had done almost this exact same thing to other people in my life. I myself had rejected people out of fear, disinterest or whatever. The realization was like getting hit in the face with a big karmic flapjack.
Oh my god, I thought. I’m that person!
No longer could I play the victim. No longer could I bathe in self-righteousness. Because I mean, how could I blame him? Really? Not to excuse his behavior, of course, but in a weird way, I kind of understood.
This didn’t ease the heartache or the cold, biting sting of rejection, but for the first time I saw things differently.
And I was humbled. And it was okay.
out the window.
And then I see him.
My heart stops. All the blood in my body begins to coagulate into an enormous lump in my chest. Scrambled eggs dangle from the edge
of my bottom lip.
I can’t believe he’s here. How could this happen?
I don’t understand.
“Wait!”
We’re standing next to my car. It’s getting late and he’s starting to walk away. But I really want to kiss him, though I’m not
entirely sure he wants to kiss me.
So I trick him.
He turns around with a serious look of concern.
“You’ve got something right…here…”
He turns towards me and when he least expects it, I quickly and clumsily plant one right on his cheek, barely missing his eye.
I start laughing and run back to my car. He laughs too and then later asks when he can see me again. We make vague plans.
And then nothing.
And then this.
This odd, strangely synchronous meeting in a diner weeks later. Not having heard a word from him. Nothing.
I’ve combed every molecule of self-doubt, but I have no answers. I don’t know what to say or do. I want to bolt. But he has since
sat down in a booth with his friends. And I will have to walk right by him to leave this place.
I take a deep breath and I stand up. I start walking and look right at him. I don’t know what to expect. I can’t even imagine what
words could possibly be exchanged. Where would I even start? How in the hell am I even going to form words? Do I even remember how
to speak English? Where am I anyway?
I reach the edge of his table and…
Nothing.
He doesn’t even look up. Instead, his eyes are focused intently on the menu in front of him.
I should have just let it go at that. But this has been my biggest challenge of 2009. Letting things go.
I contacted him a few weeks later to ask him what happened. Cause I mean, I just wanted to know and in some weird way salvage what
little friendship we had left.
You see, because of him, I started taking Tai Chi. Because I knew he had his own contemplative practice and it seemed to help him. I
thought, I should try something too. Maybe it will help me. And it did. And I am sincerely grateful for that.
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December 9th, 2009 at 7:57 pm
Love it. And secretly (or not so, since I’m saying this in a comment) want to see this played out on the silver screen. But also feel your pain. And can completely relate to the challenge of letting go. Yep. That’s a doozy.
December 10th, 2009 at 10:16 am
[...] here: A Karmic Bitchslap | Obey My Blog By admin | category: scrambled eggs | tags: blood, body, body-begins, chest, dreamily-out, [...]
December 10th, 2009 at 10:48 am
Question :
Do you think everything happens for a reason and that chaos is simply an inability to see the pattern at work
or,
Is everything just chaos, and pattern is merely a string of odd coincidences which our minds desperately link together in an effort to create meaning?
December 10th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
Ow. That makes my brain hurt.
You need to read Dainin Katagiri’s, Each Moment is the Universe. It will rock your world. And also because I don’t even know how to begin to answer this question! (and I might add, it would only be speculation on my part anyway)
December 10th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
Well, it’s really more of a question about how YOU in particular view the world and more particularly these events involving meeting this guy, going to Tai-Chi, etc.
Karma implies order, so maybe the relevant part of meeting / knowing this guy was the Tai Chi, not the actual romantic bit.
Unless of course everything is chaos, in which case the only value of a thing or an event is what you give to it.
December 10th, 2009 at 9:04 pm
I still don’t know how to answer this. Everything I can possibly think of sounds like pretentious bullshit and I can’t bring myself to write it…
So, I’ll go with what I know…
Things like this happen to me all the time. They happen to almost everyone I know. So I guess I don’t really think it’s necessary to analyze whether it was due to chaos or a pattern in the universe. Even if I did understand it, I have to wonder if it would even make a difference. I get very uncomfortable debating things like this (can you tell?), because it’s all conjecture – no one really knows. And I feel like it misses the point – the point being people, how we act in the moment, how we behave towards each other, how we behave towards ourselves.
I use the term karma not as way of implying order but as way of revealing parts of ourselves that we may not want to face. Our relationships are like mirrors – and how we treat others comes back to “haunt” us, only because we end up seeing in ourselves what we project onto others.
I don’t see my relationship/friendship with him as a means to an end (Tai Chi) – I never did. He mattered. He was relevant. Not the Tai Chi.
Perhaps that sounds weird coming from someone who writes a blog about Tai Chi. Or maybe not. I don’t know.
It was only because I cared about him that seeing him in that diner meant anything anyway. If he meant nothing to me, I wouldn’t have given it a second thought.
December 11th, 2009 at 1:14 am
Fair enough.
It was a very human post, by the way.
December 16th, 2009 at 11:59 pm
Great storytelling! Thanks for this glimpse into self analysis.
December 17th, 2009 at 11:54 pm
Thanks Matt!