About a more cheerful aspect of life

As I promised, this post will be about a more positive aspect of life than the previous one. So, right after the event detailed in my previous post, a traveller at the bus station asked me how to find the metro station he needed. I needed the same line, so we took the metro together. This was his first time in Berlin, in the framework of a larger first trip to Europe, so he was wondering what to see and whether I was willing to show him some Berlin basics. Alas, during the pretty long metro ride he learned what I had just gone through, so he was only expressing interest in hanging out together and see sights as opposed to wander around alone. The next they was Pentecoste Monday which meant that the archives were closed so I was free for sightseeing. I showed him some of the "must see" sights of Berlin, such as the Brandenburger Tor, Unter den Linden, Tiergarten, the Reichstag, the Museum Island, Alexanderplatz, we also bought some books in a flea market. Thanks to him I ended up having a good time on that day which had been predestined to be miserable for me. The mourning process continues of course, at the same time I appreciate that while we get so much hurt by our loved ones, strangers can put so much effort in making fellow human beings feel better. He even invited me for dinner, eating more than a spoonfool did not work yet. But still I had a nice afternoon and evening.

On the note of eating, the first real meal I had since the last weekend was the Shabbat dinner in the Paideia Alumni Conference in this weekend.  (Lack of sleep persists, I keep on using several night hours for work.)

The Paideia reunions always bring a lot of inspiration and fun. We had great programs with food for thought and I received a lot of emotioal support both from classmates who know me well, both from alumni of other cohorts who said they appreciated that I dared to write my previous blog post.  Since with my cohort we spent at least 8 hours five days a week together for 8 months during the studies in Stockholm, we really got to know each other. We live all over Europe, most of us see each other only once a year, but we continute discussions as if we were continuing discussions started a day ago. I think it is not even an exaggeration what someone said in the weekend, that Paideia reunions are like coming home. It does feel something like meeting a chosen family.

I started Paideia in August 2014, thus I know my Padeian friends since a little less than 3 years. During this time I broke up three times. It seems better to embrace that I am a person with lot of dramas, passions, joys and pains and events in my love life, even though as a teenager I expected my romantic life would be more "boring" and less dramatic. It seems that my self-image as the girl predestined for super-peaceful stabile life is too far away from reality. 

Moses Maimonides Fellows, reunion 2 years after graduation

Well, here I might not look super cheerful, this session was about why we still don't speak Hebrew :)

Around 10 years ago someone who was at least 10 years older told me I would have happy relationships because I don't draw assholes in my life. This was true so far, however, no partner in my adult life accepted me as I really am, they loved me while hated some important characteristic  of mine (academic lifestyle, enthusiasm for  Jewish stuff, or leftiness, the worst is the one who did not even tell me what it was) which they tried to change. These are exactly the things though that I don't want to change. It is also true that except for one case, I could also not accept the partner's attitude to these traits.

It is also suggested that there should be more single time between two relationships than it occurs in my life. I am aware that if only a short time passes between two relationships, one's partner choice might be to a large extent a reflection on the previous disappointment. This is theory. The reality of life is that all relationships start only as dating and most dates don't turn into relationships. I dated significantly more guys than the number of those who became my boyfriends. It is just that as soon as I processed a break up enough to be able to trust people again and be interested, I date people without thinking of the perspective of a relationship and some dates still turn serious. Especially, when I am abroad and the guy lives there, so yes, there is a pattern here absolutely. Those extraterritorial situations make it super improbable that something durable would come out of them and this challange makes both of the involved super interested and invested in making it happen. I must say that while I can get romantically involved quite quickly, so can the boyfriends. The reason my single periods so far did not last much longer than the post-breakup depression is not that I thought they should not, I knew about the benefits of singleness, I think I just have too much feeling and thought  to share and there is demand for this in the world.