TravelChick

'I'd rather hang around and be there with my best friend, if she wants me'

Things tend to go terribly awry in when you're living in a foreign country and not neccessarily because bad things happen but sometimes just because they happen in a strange place. Although Syria is a developing country, it's definitely one of the more comfortable developing countries to be living in, especially in the Middle East. Woman can walk around by themselves, drive, take taxis alone, and do things like that that make life a little easier. Somewhat unexpectedly to me, I've felt really comfortable and at ease since I moved to Damascus and, until yesterday, hadn't had a moment in which I thought I really wanted to leave.

I've had a bit of a rough week. It started with a somewhat atrocious Valentine's Day, got better around the end of the week, and then took a turn for the worse yesterday. I have been feeling somewhat out of sorts lately and it all came to a head last night. I was on my way home from a somewhat awkward conversation with a guy in my dialect class in which I attempted to clarify where our relationship was headed. He had mentioned in class he has a fiancee but never talks about her otherwise and, after some making out Thursday and subsequently nice but strictly friendly meetings after that, I thought I would be direct and find out what was going on. Nothing, as it turns out, which is fine, but on my way home I had a moment of spectacular loneliness prompted by glancing at an internet cafe and knowing I could write to my friends scattered around the world but wishing they were there, on that Damascene street, to hang out with me.

The internet cafe was open (oddly enough, since it was almost midnight), so I walked in and wrote some e-mails, which made me feel better because at least I was writing to someone about my moment of spectacular loneliness. It made me feel worse, though, because I suddenly felt a loss of a sense of purpose. I know I'm here to learn Arabic, but it's been rather tough this past week as I've realized I can't speak well at all. I also feel a sense of failure: I'm failing to learn Arabic as well as I could, I'm failing at my friendships and relationships here, and I'm failing at building up a career.

I got home and texted my friend Mike asking him if he could be my friend on call, if he would meet up with me the next day for coffee. He said of course, that he would phone me the next day. Of course, the next morning I realized I should talk to a girl, so I texted my friend Stephanie, and she suggested we go out for dinner. To make things easier, I asked Mike to go with us.

We went to dinner at a new Chinese restaurant in the Old City. On the way there Stephanie and I shared our fear that we're never going to married. Mike suggested that if we got ourselves used to this idea we'd be much happier with our lives and made a horribly inappropriate analogy between our situation and one he was once in. He said that, one evening, he discovered he didn't have a pillow and he was really upset that he had to sleep without a pillow. But, from that moment, he decided that he was going to get used to the idea of sleeping without a pillow, and he's slept without one ever since (this was three years ago), and he's been perfectly happy. He suggested that if we get used to the idea that we're never going to get married, we'll be perfectly happy, like he was without the pillow. I pointed out that this is an awful comparison for several reasons, the most obvious being that YOU CAN BUY A PILLOW. He of course chose to argue with me on this, telling me that you aren't always in a situation where you can buy a pillow. Of course. But while Target, Macy's, Amazon, and Ebay, I'm sure, are all fine purveyors of pillows, they do not sell husbands.

The lesson here is that 21 year old men are poor substitutes for your girlfriends. They're not going to be your cheerleader, they're not going to say that of course you're going to get married if that's what you want, they're going to gloss over the math and determine that it's possible for you to get your PhD/establish your career/get married/possibly even have a child within the space of 10 years, before the risk of having a baby with birth defects goes up dramatically. Men don't have to think about that.

While in the US it might be completely obvious that 21 year old men are poor subsitutes for girlfriends, when your circle of friends is severely limited by your language ability, the fact that you've been living in a city for just under four months, and a myriad of other factors, you look for comfort in the people you feel comfortable with. In my case, Mike falls under that category. Having this happen in Damascus made this much worse than having it happen in London, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Munich, or Atlanta.

posted by Travel Chick @ 3:05 PM