Zen and the Art of God Knows What

So I'm back from Boston after a 5 day trip up there and I feel fucking... zen. Calm in a way that I haven't felt in a while, since the Jock and I broke up even. Probably has something to do with the fact that last time I was in Boston I was focused on the idea of a rebound - so much so that I didn't really get to re-connect as much as I did this time around.

I've spent the almost 4 months since the Ex and I broke up frantically searching. For a replacement. For something to fill the void of how empty I felt. I've come to realize that my Peace Corps experience was so intertwined with my Ex that when I got back -- it was like I didn't know who I was anymore. Which sounds fucking cheesy, but is more fucking annoying -- 2.5 years of spending almost all my time alone (post-communist country doesn't really breed a strong sense of community) and it's like I'm back at Square One? And obviously looking for it in hipsters' bed and the bottom of a wine glass wasn't the smartest place to start looking, but definitely the most accessible.

But when you spend 1.5 years with someone being your lifeline either from inside the country or from across the Atlantic, after a while it almost starts to define who you are. My parents never made it to Romania, so in a lot of ways the Ex became my storyteller. My explainer. My counterpart in what I had gone through. It was OK if no one ever really understood what I had gone through, because I had someone who knew. I had someone to glance sideways at when eyes started to glaze over during a story I was telling about Romania. I was secure in the knowledge that I would be one of those romantical We-Met-In-Peace-Corps stories.

Regardless, it's been a rough few months. Rougher than I admitted to anyone, or really fully acknowledged. And maybe there's something to be said that almost all my friends in Boston are male. Take that as a gender roles statement if you want, but there's something to be said for getting your heart broken, then broken a few more smaller times by perhaps irrelevant rebounds, only to see your friends again and feel ... safe. Saw Colonel Mustard again, and was a little surprised at how little we clicked, and how drunk I must have been last time I was up. But that wasn't the point this time, was it?

I packed for Boston with all my short dresses and cute shoes, assuming I would be going out a lot - perhaps looking for rebound number 2. Instead, I spent most of my time on my friend's couch drinking wine and watching TV. At one point we played online Scrabble which simply involving passing a Laptop back and forth. Cheesy? Absolutely. Comforting? Definitely.

Which is the one thing really missing in all these rebounds, all these random encounters: comfort. And if I admit it to myself, was always lacking with the Ex. Shared, sometimes boring, comfortable encounters. Most of the time when I would visit him at his site/town, he would be on his computer for hours while I read a book in a chair. There was lounging in bed to some extent, but mostly just for sex and sleeping. Other than that, a lot of solitary simultaneous activities. In Education classes, they call it "Parallel Play" - a more immature precursor to actual interaction. And as for the Ex and I, we never really got there.

I guess that's what I loved about this past weekend -- it was the other part that I had been missing, for longer than I had even realized. I had the sex, but I never had this casual intimacy of the comforting low-key. The fact that nothing sexual happened with anyone the whole time I was there I see as some kind of a silent victory. Or maybe there's just progress in the not looking for it. For sleeping in the bed of a good friend without it leading to anything, and having that mean more than act of anything sexual ever would.

For being content with just seeing good friends, with good wine, with the ability to go back in some small way. In some small way, I feel like myself again.