Summary: we learn a bit more about Beca and Emily's Friendship. And some other things too.

"A Leaf - is not a word *Leaf*

A Leaf - is an experience - *Leaf*"

October 20, 2014

I met Emily on my Intro to the Philosophy class that I technically wasn't supposed to be in. and neither was she. we were two outsiders. the most surprising coincidence was that we were both psychology majors. some days in past i often wondered how i got these big, important P's mixed up. I thought it should have been philosophy i majored in, because i hated psych with passion. so why did that happen you ask? I ask myself that often too. The answer is simple and not simple at the same time. These kind of answers never are.

the short version would be that i was young and easily influenced, that my parents wanted me to do something practical, cause what use would a philosophy degree be? did i plan to waste my time and life on something so selfish? did i plan to be jobless and unable to support myself and live financially dependant on my parents?

so somehow that happened. 'Somehow' is the key word. When you are that young, 17, 18, 19 you don't realise the weight of your decisions. you lack foresight. some never really acquire it i guess. but usually it comes with experience. so when you are 18, you have no experience, you are still floating in haze. still instinctual and irresponsible. mostly irresponsible regarding to your life, yourself. Or maybe that was just me.

I was never the kind of kid who knew where she was going, who knew the destination for her aspirations, the numbers she should knock, the path she should conquer. i was just - drifting along with the flow. and as it turns out that could prove very detrimental to someone's future. to exchange momentary thoughtlessness and inertia for several lost years, is it worth it? no, no of course. the problem with me was that i didn't know the price. the bigger problem was that i had an unwillingness to contemplate it. I had an unwillingness to feel the importance of this decision. i didn't want to think about what it meant, nobody told me to. that was not the culture i was raised in. neither globally nor locally.

I regret it to this day.

but i am tired of this topic now. maybe later. anyway back to me and Em's meeting.

As i was saying we met in a philosophy class. The lecturer was an acquaintance of our acquaintance, her name was Elaine, (lecturer's) and she knew i was interested in philosophy from Gail (the acquaintance) and offered to let me attend her class for free, to just listen and enjoy or something. turns out the exact thing happened with Emily, except with different acquaintance. anyway that is not the point. the point is after the second lecture we ended up on the same bus stop. She was wearing red scarf and red sneakers. It was autumn and i was feeling slightly less antisocial than usual. and also strangely in the mood to not be rude. So i said 'hi', she smiled and replied the same, asked me which year i was in. soon we figured out that neither of us were actual students but just lucky trespassers, that we both majored in psychology and thought that we should have studied philosophy instead. we were two of a kind, weren't we? it was such an unlikely occurrence i couldn't not be curious.

when i got at home that night i found her on facebook and messaged her without much deliberation.

Beca : you really like red don't you? do you know what kandinsky says about that color?

Emilie : Yeah, yeah, I do, I love his color theory. which one are you?

Beca : i want to be blue i think.

Emilie : I wear red outside but inside I am divided.

Beca : i don't understand red. but maybe i can understand division.

that is how our friendship started. It was two years ago and we have been going steady since then.

i wasn't looking for friends when i met emily. i was not looking for anything at all. and in that period of my life i was as far away from color red as it gets. practically on another planet where there is no notion of the color red. but her insides balanced her outsides or i just couldn't mind. even somebody like me needed some social interaction, right? and Emily was so easy to be with.

somehow, in a way i still can't figure out, we complement each other. she can talk but she can also be silent, which is a bit perfect for somebody like me. she never demands anything from me, never causes dramatics, never pushes or pulls me. she has this golden talent of letting me be. there is no pressure of 'call me i need to know what's wrong with you'. 'i am your friend you should tell me things', 'i need you and you are not there'. no such things. if there were such things we, with the person i was back then, we would not have lasted a month.

i was very lucky, i am lucky to have met her. i think is she? sometimes i contemplate that. was i what she was looking for in a friend, or was she not looking for anything particular either? did she also enjoy not being bothered or pushed? did she find the boundaries or our relationship satisfactory or did she want something else and i didn't realise?

there are so many questions. our friendship was like a plant in a common street. we would both pass by and nurture it with some substance and attention without deliberately setting out to do so. it was just there and we didn't mind, soon it was our routine.

we shared class, we spoke about literature and philosophy, about music and poetry.

we both loved to read.

Emily loved music more than me, i was more of a lyrics' person. So she explained music and i explained semiotics. She told me about 'serious' movies she had watched.(it was always Ozon, Bergman or something along these lines, like i said, hard stuff, that's why i called them 'serious' movies after all) She loved those movies. I hated 'serious' movies but i told her about what morbid poem i discovered that day and why i liked it so much.

sometimes we went to theater or if it was my pick - some terrible movie that she tolerated for my sake. she had an ocean of patience when it came to me, i mean she has. i made her sit through 'Insurgent' once and that really says something. she abhors such films but tolerated the incentive for me. truth be told i also detested that movie and we agreed to forget we ever saw it. we have a list of movies that we refer to as "films we should forget with unparalleled ardor." most of those are the ones i made her watch, as you probably already guessed.

almost every tuesday we drank the same lemonade at the same cafe and our lemonade-feeded plant just grew by itself.

but i don't know why i wrote all of that in past tense, it's not like everything's not still true. we still do most of the things. many thing have changed and the plant definitely transformed both physically and conceptually. but yeah, these stuff, our routines still stand.

27 october, 2014

I can't. I just can't deal today. I can't deal. everything is wrong. nothing works, nothing is right. i spilled coffee on somebody and the birds were on the fence and then just flew away, and the roads were noisy and loud on the way back and i am sitting on my bed and i can't. stand. can't. why did i do the things i did? why? what was the meaning of all that? why couldn't i have been better? why couldn't i have been right? why can't i ever be right? can i ever be? will it ever be okey? will it ever go away?

some day right? it is possible, i know, theoretically, i know this, you know this, and you need to remember that, even if you forget your whole past, you need to remember that, at least theoretically, get it? it's important. you may not understand how important, but somewhere you were or will be, understands this, and all you need to do now is to just.. hold on to it for the time being. glue it on the fucking wall if you have to. mind matters, mind still matters, mind has its place. okey?

BUT MIND IS NOT HELPING ME, IS IT? SO WHAT THE FUCKING USE DOES IT HAVE TO ME? WHAT THE FUCKING USE DID IT EVER HAVE?

this, this UNSOUND. this is the true hell. this is the rightest punishment. this is what i deserve. this is intolerable, yet there is no other way. it is what it should be. i know i know. oh, god, somebody, whomever, i do know. and that is the hardest. that is the most difficult part. that is what i can't get over. i can't get over it. because there is no her. there is no more Beca. who is Beca Mitchell? where is Beca Mitchell? I don't know Beca Mitchell. I don't remember her. I don't, I don't. I'dont. I don't remember. I don't remember. What did i do?

28 October, 2015

- that girl is very hot - Emily told me that day, looking sideways at Stacie, lightly, imperceptibly.

there was no question in her eyes, there are never questions in Emily's eyes, only blank spaces, that i can fill with answers if i want to and if not, that's never a problem.

- yes, she is.

I paused, thinking if i wanted to elaborate, usually i just start and narrate about my past and she just listens, i tell facts and thought i remember happened, reasons and explanations, supposed and actual meanings. I just talk about it like one would deliver a history presentation : this was the year, these were the events, this was what i think caused that event and these are what i think were the consequences. it happened to someone, some time in past, it's past. ( i don't know how she makes sense of the shit i rant about).

But i found myself halting on this one. drawn back into the palimpsest of my mind. traversing memory, or what little of it i retained.

Stacie was difficult to explain, me and Stacie more so. How do i attempt to describe it?

I met Stacie at an alcoholic anonymous meeting. she was wearing an ugly green skirt and a nice sweater. never one for subtlety and grace, more like one for impulsiveness and random bursts of severe lack of tact, i told her exactly that.

I said : 'i think your skirt is an ugly color, it is the color of a lemon, who swallowed too many lemons and got ill', she just stared at me and said nothing for the remainder of the session.

I don't know why i said that to her. i spoke the least on these sessions and never interacted with other people. just sat by myself, bored out of my mind, thinking how useless and meaningless the whole thing was.

But when Stacie entered the group she was so lanky and so hot, she burned everyone's attention away from themselves for once, made them lose track of their thoughts. She was that flaming and vigorous. She seemed like a festival of a person. There was no stopping her, she was insanely energetic and an insufferable flirt. often the session leader would have to ask her to abate ( who says that really? did he think up a comparison or something, like was she was a sea or ocean in his mind? whatever ), which sounded to me more like 'please, have mercy on these poor souls and me, before we fall into another obsession that these tasteless sessions can't cure'. She'd cool down than, a bit, but that never really lasted.

With Stacie attending i found myself more motivated to also not altogether skip these things, she was rather entertaining, you couldn't be bored in her presence, there was just this aura about her. charged, buoyant, lioness-like. i don't know. that's how it felt.

after our initial fiasco of a beginning, which was really my fiasco, (truthfully, i wanted to rectify that someway but couldn't somehow bring myself to) we didn't interact much, which is why it's rather peculiar that we found ourselves on our first date two weeks later.

how did that come about? well, that is an interesting phenomenon, as is, or was our whole relationship.

on the tenth day of our slippery acquaintance, (i think it was the tenth yeah) i got a message. from Stacie. who knew nothing about me, except something that suggested i was probably a capricious jerk.

so color me surprised when that happened, but color me shocked when i actually read her message, no, not message, it was a letter. but it was not just a letter, it was more like a breathing stone, with myriad of colors, tossed in the air of uncertainty, from a stranger, towards a stranger, to catch and admire. And catch i did. and i would learn later that she was and wasn't surprised at the same time. which was an unconventional thing to say, but so was Stacie.

and anyway, if we are talking about surprises, out of the two of us she was always the bigger one.

October 23, 2014

Emily called today, all excited about her possibly new crush. She met her at the art center, where she works. God, so many 'she's', that is a really negative side effect of gayness. you can never figure out which 'she' is the 'she' one means! pretty irritating. anyway, Emily is the one who works at the art center as an art therapist (she actually found a facet of her education she doesn't completely hate to put to use, on the contrary, in reality she quite likes it there) and this new girl just switched to her class, from another group. Ems told me, she is not sure if she is gay or not, which is a good doubt for Emily to have, cause frankly speaking her gayday sucks, it sucks more than my speaking ability, so you get the idea, or you don't. because you are a diary i write in, and have no idea that writing and talking are two different things when it comes to me, i am horrible at talking.

where was i?

so yes, emily's gaydar is a major suckfeets. she never, ever gets it right, ever. it's more like anti-gaydar in most cases. if she thinks the girl is gay, you can be like 95% sure that she is totally straight, so yeah, no help to herself, that one.

so i asked her to show me this girl, to run her in my admittedly better gaydar. figures, no triggers for me, that chick looks rather straight - unfortunately for Em, but who knows? I wish Emily could get with a girl she likes for once. than she could be excited and i could somewhat share her excitement, cause when it comes to me, there is not much hope, or at all (no magic on this side). I don't crush. I mean i don't ever like anybody, i haven't experienced attraction in years. I forgot how that feels. i just remember or have a general knowledge that it must be nice. but i seem to have lost that file from my system. it either got erased or misplaced, altered during one of the many reboots. i don't know.

I just know that i don't feel like that anymore. it just is not there.

many things are not, so, yeah. what gives.

I studied Emily's reactions, observing them live and in writing, when she messaged me about it: the excitement, giddiness, pleasant trepidation. to me those seem like strange creatures from another realm. i watch and watch them and can't make sense, where or why or how they came about, or what their nature is. or how come i know their names and characteristics but still can't understand them. can't grasp them at all. it's so weird. like watching a picture with a triangle on it, but not really seeing it, just with the help of math swiftly calculating that triangle is what must be displayed on it. but you don't really perceive the triangle, you compute it.

so you tell me, does it matter how you arrive at the answer?

What is the difference?

Notes: (Please excuse my spelling or grammar mistakes. English is not my first language, I don't have a beta and this is my first attempt at writing anything) Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoy and if you've got questions, ask away.