I'm not exactly sure how I feel about anniversaries. I think of them as temporary traditions; some milestone we fabricate to design a history, a past with someone who we have known for a mere, but exact, month or a year. Exact being the key word of an anniversary. And so it just happens that this day has turned out to be an anniversary to a couple of different things.
First, it's been a month since I have consciously become a vegetarian (and mostly vegan). I think that there have been weeks before in which I did not have meat nor did I want any, but I have never consciously decided that I will not eat meat anymore. So far it's been very easy. Don't get me wrong, I do like meat but after spending five years in the US, I no longer really crave meat. Moreover, the idea of eating meat has become somewhat dirtied in my mind.
For a long time now I have not felt entirely comfortable with the idea of eating meat not only for ethical reasons, but also for health and economic reasons. So once I made this conscious decision to be a vegetarian, being a vegan wasn't very far off from that for me. I already don't really care for cheese or eggs and since moving to the US, I have loved the new market of different milks (soy, almond, rice, hazelnut). I only consume milk if I have cereals or if I feel like adding it to my smoothies will make the miraculously better. I am not at all a yogurt person. I don't like salad dressing and I hate mayo.
The only reason why I said "mostly vegan" is because I don't really care too much to investigate into things I'm buying and meals at restaurants and occasionally I enjoy eating some eggs and bread. I also add honey to my teas and coffees. So really the change wasn't very drastic for me.
Still, three weeks in, when I found by an accident that there were pieces of chicken in my meal that I thought to be vegetarian, I had a very visceral reaction. Upon eating the small bit of chicken, I was first very unsure what it was. It surprised me because I suddenly didn't recognize immediately that I was eating chicken. It was as if I already forgotten the taste to some extent since the flavor was so unexpected. Then, I felt a little sick to my stomach and for a brief second I didn't want to finish my meal. This whole thing lasted about two seconds after which I had no problem, but even those two seconds of disgust upon encountering meat was a very new experience to me.
The second anniversary is related to the fact that it has been exactly ten days since we are no longer together. This whole relationship has caused me much pain and much joy, but it couldn't continue anymore. He made a choice to stay idle and not to risk anything for us. And so I had to move on, because I would never forgive myself letting the world happen around me as I cling onto a single hope and that is a relationship that means too much, but also doesn't mean anything.
Still, it hurts to remember. It's not a savage pain, though, because day by day the abyss between us had widened and words of bondage had become scarce and barely audible. And because I felt that I had lost too much in this toxic swirl of emotion and pride, I let myself walk away and I let myself mourn the possibility itself. After all, it was always just a possibility.
I don't think he knows what chapter of his life he is living through. I don't think I know what I want right now. And so it's perfectly clear that there are many questions, but neither one of us ever bothered to direct them at the other, for they didn't belong to the other but purely to our selfish selves. Walking away wasn't the only option, but it was the only hope.
The third anniversary marks a full month since my return back home. And I hate it. I hate my room, I hate that nothing feels like it belongs to me or I belong to it, I hate looking at old books that are just reminding me of someone I apparently once used to be, but now can't remember, I hate trying to communicate how I feel in my mother tongue that has now become so alienated and so obscure, I hate not living alone or with him, I hate the bed that's too big for one but too small for nightmares, I hate being confronted with Czech people as if I was observing them from the outside, I hate the different foods and social rules that I forgot how to follow, I hate the weather and that people always fucking stare at you in Prague, I hate that nobody here can mind their business, I hate to feel excluded from my friends and I hate to feel included with strangers... I hate all the ways in which I have changed, and I hate all the ways in which I haven't. But still, this hatred is transient: it appears for a second, sometimes very early in the day, and then disappears, leaving me again without much feeling and without much thought. It's better thane expected actually; I don't hate the city.
I really hope that with time, it becomes easier. By the way I feel, you could have said that I am experiencing a real break up with Santa Fe and my way of living in the US and my way of being myself when over there, while I am experiencing a mild "moving on" sensation with my finished relationship, one that you get when moving houses or coming back to the site of your childhood.
That's probably true for now. I take harder the fact that I feel completely out of context, completely barren of my self than the fact that I will probably never talk to the one person who made me feel like I and with me the world mattered.
Anniversaries. They are my new context, my new history, my new past.
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