Pieces

Since I last wrote, I passed my comps with flying colors, doing better than I ever expected. Thank God:-).

Since comps is over, I've been kind of forced to deal with what is my life. I don't like it, and I want it to change. I hate being in the position where I am forced to pick up the pieces of my battered heart. Meanwhile, I am in something that works just fine with me, but I want something else with someone else.

I spend time with Alex every so often. He's sort of become the male friend I've always wanted - someone to hang out with, to exchange war stories with, someone I can feel I can be real with and he can be real with me, with no strings attached and no expectations. But sometimes I wonder where he truly stands. Not because I have any interest in him romantically, because I really don't. Not anymore. But because I wonder if when I see him, I'm looking at my past or my future. Last weekend, he and I went to the mall and to the bar. At the bar, he and I were talking, when he noticed that the jukebox was playing my favorite song. I didn't notice it, but he did. He told me, and I was surprised he remembered it. It reminded me of when he remembered exactly how long, to the month, he knew I liked him. Earlier that same night, we were walking around the mall, talking about clothes, and he knew what plus-size stores carry what types of clothes, even though, as far as I know, none of the women in his family are fat, and neither are his pretend girlfriends or real-life exes. It amazes me that he pays attention to my life. I guess friends do that. I just wonder, though. It's like the signs sort of point to him, but I just don't see him like that anymore. Besides, I think he would have to be straightforward for me to believe his intentions have changed for the romantic.

Meanwhile, Nikolai and I seem to argue almost every time we speak. I'm not particularly sure why. Something tells me he has grown argumentative, and like Brooke says, he doesn't like anyone and that includes me. On one hand I look at him as a miserable excuse for a human being because he is terribly superficial and he has sold his soul for his thirty pieces of silver (to be the department asskisser). On the other hand, I still have feelings for him. My body is still drawn to him, and my heart longs for him. I guess I miss what it seemed we once had. To some extent, I feel responsible for what our friendship has become. Yet, at the end of the day, it was he and not I who chose to throw it away.

I could not control everything that occurred back in April. But something tells me that the incident in Chicago, which Nikolai can't seem to let go of, is only a cover for something deeper. Something tells me that if he didn't think I liked him, none of this would've happened. How he has felt about me - well, I don't know. I think that he liked me, but didn't want to like me because of my weight and my culture. By nature, he is a conformist. They say that the difference between Leo and Aries is that Leo tends to care more about their own popularity than Aries, the natural-born rebel. I am not into astrology, but this difference exemplifies the difference between Nikolai and myself. I think he worries too much about whether or not I would be acceptable as a fat woman. Secondly, I get the sense that many of our clashes are rooted in cultural differences, particularly the more male-dominant, patriarchal nature of his Eastern European culture, versus the more female-liberated American culture and somewhat matriarchal structure of African-American culture.

In any case, I cannot be what he wants me to be. Even if I lost weight, the struggle with weight is still a part of who I am. I am an American, through and through, and an African-American at that; I cannot behave as a woman from his country or from his region of the globe. I cannot be something I am not, and I don't want to be something that I am not. I cannot live a lie.

So what I am left with is my broken heart. I really just pray that one day, I can be loved and appreciated for who I am. I cannot let go of the hope I have, no matter how easy it is to believe all hope is lost.