Because This Problem Is Going To Last More Than The Weekend: Part Three

Last Sunday morning (May 13th) I woke up around 7:30am and looked out the window to blue sky and I thought about the night before when I was sure Tbilisi was going to explode. I got on my laptop and spent some time downloading movies, music, and random TV shows that I will probably never get to watching or listening to, but the thought of having over 250GB of entertainment comforts me. I dealt with some of my friends back home and their drunk Saturday night issues that made me wish that I could be there with them, but I’m half a world away and it’s going to be like this for quite some time. 

I started to feel a little sad over this and the fact that I was missing Mother’s Day, again. Last year my mother had been mad at me over buying a last minuet ticket to go to Ukraine to see a guy that I missed. My grandfather gave me his blessing so I won that fight and proved my point, but I still felt like shit that she was fuming at me. The year before that I spent working all day at Gap then Bath and Body Works, which spurred me to quit the latter of the jobs. (What store that is dedicated to women makes their employees work after store hours to move bottles of lotion from one tower to another?) I know I was just missing another brunch were, ok food was being served, but being away from Maine for so long now has put in perspective just how important spending time with family is. I was also still a little upset about a stupid fight I had, had the night before.

I sat in my bed for the whole morning, trying to save the world back in Maine and write a Mother’s Day blog for Mama Otter. I got a text a little after noon, from the moron Jamie, saying that him and George were heading to one of the main streets in Tbilisi. I read it and threw my phone on to my bed and stayed there typing away, not wanting to be near him. I eventually took a shower and packed all my stuff up as the internet at the hostel was acting up and not wanting to upload my pictures and set off in the direction that the guys were. 

I got another text asking were the hell I was, as when both of us are in Tbilisi on Sunday mornings we have brunch together and then take the marshookah back to our villages together. I told him that I was on my way. I stopped in my favorite cafe to get a large coffee to go (It tastes like American coffee) and took it to the cafe where they were eating. When I walked in Jamie verbally assaulted me for having a drink from another establishment with me. I just looked at him and said “It’s Georgia, no one gives a fuck.” George just sat on his MacBook doing what ever he was doing, and sided with me that no one probably cared. (No one does. I sat at a bar last night drink vodka from a bottle that I had bought and chasing it with my juice from my “Adult” juice box. It’s half a liter, that’s what makes it adult.)

In this cafe you can see into the kitchen where they are making pastries and I spotted their massive meringues that they have. I declared that I was going to get one in honor of Mother’s Day, because Mama Otter loves them and ran as fast as I could to order. I came back to the table with it and started to giggle at it’s sheer size and being over caffeinated. Jamie looked at me in horror as I started to eat and said, “Well there goes your diet!” (I bet him that I can loose a kilo a week for my last six weeks here to shut him up for always making fun of me for being fat.) He kept going on and on about all the sugar in it and how I was basically asking for diabetes at that point. We had a fight over how bad it was and I googled it and declared myself the winner, on what I’m not really sure. I started to feel really sick about a third of the way through and had to put it away and started cursing getting it. Mama Otter would not want me to feel this ill for her, but then again she may have laughed over this and found it funny.

"Oh haha, so funny! Look at this massive meringue!"

"OM NOM NOM!" 

"I am going to vomit everywhere!"

We finished up at the cafe and walked George to catch the metro, so he could get his marshookah home. Jamie and I walked to a market to get some food for him and water to wash the sugar out of my mouth. I wasn’t my usual self, joking with him and making fun of everything in sight. I was too nackered and I felt the odd rage coming back again. He confronted me about it and I tried to brush it off and just said that I was tired and didn’t feel well after that stupid Mother’s Day meringue, which was also true, just not the real issue. We were mostly silent on the way to get our marshookah and stayed quite for the first bit of the ride, until I started in again about my friends back home and being sent texts and Facebook messages, asking me to come back to Maine and stay there. Jamie just turned and looked at me and said, “Oh waaaaa! People miss you and want you to come back home. That is just so horrible!” He turned away and looked out the window, leaving me there to think for a moment and wanting to ask wasn’t it the same for him, but I knew the answer. It donned on me that not everyone came to Georgia, for the same reasons as me. Some people left where they were from, because they had nothing left there and when they leave here, some won’t go back to families that missed them, friends that missed drinking with them, or jobs that missed them showing up not matter how hung over they were. I get to go back to all three, whenever I decide that I’ve had enough and want to call Maine my place of residence again. 

I put my headphones in and listened to Emily and The Woods “Steal His Heart” (music video included for your listening pleasure).

The landscape passed by me in a blur, the marshookah driver seemed to be doing his best to go the fastest he could, which I wasn’t too comfortable with as there had been torrential rains the night before and there had been flooding and roads partially washed out. I did not want to die. I just sat listening to my “girl” music and thinking. I thought about the advice that I had given Jamie earlier in the week, about us all only having five more weeks together until school ends and then we go our separate ways and trying to make the most of it, and enjoy what little time we have left, because even for those of us who come back in the autumn it won’t be the same.

I remember taking my headphones out and looking up and smiling at him. He asked what I was smiling at. I don’t blame him, I usually am up to something, and I told him nothing. It was a quite marshookah ride home that day, no one told us to shut up like they normally do. He read his book and I listened to my music. I caught myself smiling in his direction a few times. I couldn’t be mad at him, just because it felt right to be for some odd reason. I didn’t know how many more rides I would have with him. Saturday morning ones, where he has always saved a seat for me when I get picked up in my village, spent eating peanut M&Ms and Bounty bars and talking and laughing endlessly about our weeks until we get to Tbilisi. Sunday afternoon ones where we are much more silent, tired from Saturday night spent out, dreading the week we will have to spend in our villages, and for me a little bit of dread that I have to say goodbye again.

When the marshookah stopped to let me off this weekend I let go of any pointless, meaningless anger that I felt towards him and gave him our usual hug goodbye. I got my bag from the back and walked a little bit and then turned around and saw him giving me a goofy wave and I couldn’t help but smile and be sad at the same time. I only have four or so weekends left of rides with him, if we go into Tbilisi every weekend until then.

Monday night, I took my nightly shower, just standing under the hot water going over what I was going to put in my blog and it hit me, I’m mad at my friend because I don’t want him to go home at the end of June. I don’t want this period of time to come to a close. I’ve already thought about the autumn and how I am going to feel about being able to look and see his town in the distance from mine and if it will sting a little like it does now, out of knowing soon he won’t be there. I think about the new volunteer who will be placed there, if someone is placed there again, and if I will silently hold it against, whoever they are, that they are not him. Trying to push him away with my rage, hoping that it will make the final goodbye not as hard, if he’s mad at me for being mad at him. It’s not working like that, though, he hasn’t stopped caring yet and it’s too hard to stay like this, now fully aware that I am using my old defense tactic of pushing people away by hurting them before they hurt me, especially when all I want is him to give me a hug and tell me that I will be ok, life won’t end in June when school does. I’ll still have him and all my moron friends, they just won’t be as close anymore. It’s not a new concept for me.

One last song for your listening pleasure: