the id, the ego, & the single misfiring brain cell

My unaccompanied baggage* was whisked away yesterday, and my household goods** were taken in an even more expedient fashion today. I'm left only with FMO*** stuff and the clothing I must, perforce, haul with me. I'll close out of this amazing apartment--which, at points, made my tour here in Turkey--Friday afternoon. It looks and feels so cold and lonely, even now. 

* Unaccompanied baggage is the stuff they fly home to you. In theory, this moves much faster than your household goods. 

** Household goods--including furniture--must be shipped by "surface." In other words, it must be shipped. Since the planes carrying my unaccompanied baggage fly so slowly from this continent, for reasons which defy scientists' best guesses, I'll probably have my HHG and my UB within a week of each other. Or maybe the ships move at supersonic speeds. 

*** Furniture (and stuff) Management Office, which provides basic kitchen supplies, in addition to furniture and necessary appliances. 

As I type, I'm gazing out across the bay, knowing this view will be mine for only three more days, when I'll move back into the Swiss Hotel for my last ten days in country.

At the end of two years, I've yet to grow weary of this amazing view. It's only one of the things I'll miss about Turkey. Mostly, I'll miss my friends here who* I expect to never see again, be they Turks or Americans or French or German or Italian or Spanish or Dutch etc. It isn't that I don't want to see them again; I'm just realistic about how life works. I'll miss the camaraderie I've enjoyed and almost come to take for granted here. I'll miss Turkish food (but my intestines won't). I'll miss Bahar and her carpet shop (and its crew), all of which filled many lonely days and helped me forget I was lonely for a little while. I'll miss not being able to ride my bike in traffic without fearing for my life. I'll miss the preponderance of people who are willing to sit down with me and have a good tavla** fight along the bay, talking smack the whole time. (It will be "tavla" to me forever, probably because this is where I learned to really play.) I'll miss listening to the calls to prayer; I've never wearied of them. They are a constant reminder that I live in an exotic locale, and they can be eerily beautiful. I'll miss dealing with people for whom it is more important to be a warm and decent human being than it is to "right" or rich. I'll miss my isolation from American politics, come to think of it. I'll miss being able to drink Turkish chai at work;*** I am forever ruined for even English tea. There really is no comparison. I'll miss the cheap and convenient public transportation to just anywhere; America has a lot of catching up to do. I'll miss a good car ride through Turkish traffic, where driving is--as Jeff put it last week--"dynamic"; it's so much more exciting and interesting (and less dangerous) than the Western world's method of observing the rules so much that the driver's brain falls asleep.

* m

** backgammon, you remember

*** I elect to retain the ability to prepare my own at will, however.

On the other hand, I won't miss Ephesus, for starters. I've been there three times--each time with a different person--that I'm bored with it, like I actually lived there. I won't miss the lack of selection in foodstuffs, either; I'm American, aka, I'm spoiled. What else will I not miss? The weird bill-paying system here.

By the way? I need bifocals. I just decided. I'm putting on my glasses and taking them off to see across the bay and my screen, and I'm tired of it.

Digression aside...I won't miss the litter and filth of this city. Or the random stink of ill-conceived Turkish plumbing. It'll be nice to get back to a place where I can go shopping without someone saying, "Where you from?" to get my attention so he can sell me textiles, gold, or leather. The aggressive capitalism here has never ceased to annoy me.

The noise. Ye gods. I won't miss that. The constant invasion of space I get when I just walk into a random shop to look at clothing. I swear...I'd walk into a shop and the girl on duty would come stand two inches from me--I could smell her--while I browsed through a rack of whatever. I still don't like it, and I still simply leave the shop when this happens.

I won't miss the Turknology, either. They are ingenious folk, but still not quite up with the rest of the developed world when it comes to basic stuff like providing basic services and maintaining said services. I've had minor problems, but some of my friends have had their internet cut because someone was doing construction, then my friend was charged to fix the problem. Stuff like that.

I'll miss the coolest number in the world: 81.*

* 81, in Turkish, is "seksan bir."

I look forward to many things, too. I can't wait to be back with my wife and our puppies* and our kitties and our home and our life together. I look forward to deciding where the cool carpets I bought here (and the handmade furniture) will go in our home. I look forward to spending evenings reading to each other in front of the fireplace or in bed, or just curling up together and watching a good movie. I look forward to being near my family and old friends again, and I look forward--very much--to teaching again. I've had a NATO life for a while now (not so much the first year, but the second? Yes. Now I know what people mean when they talk about "NATO"; life moves slowly, but this is a necessity, believe it or not. All the same, it changes you to work in such an environment. In a good way, if you ask me. I learned, for the first time since I was a child, to just breathe in and out, have a chai, and have patience). Anyway...I'm ready to go back to teaching, which is the most rewarding work I've ever done, by far. While I've had a connection with my peers here in a way that I've never had before--which, I'm told, is not unusual for overseas assignments--I miss my cadets.

* They will always be puppies to me.

All this rambling before I get to what I really wanted to talk about, and that may be because I still don't know how to....

I've changed in a fundamental and powerful way in the last two years: I believe I'm worthy.

That may be too broad (and vague), but it's a start to expressing what I mean.

I have to regress to explain this, and I will do my best to avoid condemning anyone along the way. If I do, please understand that doing so is not my intent.

For whatever reasons, I grew up not believing in myself. I have a lot of theories, but they would just incite speculation and defensiveness about religion and cultural/parental methods, etc. I worked to feel worthy my whole life, and failed.

Worthy of what? you ask. Friends. To be more specific, to have friends who enjoyed being around me as much as I enjoyed being around them. No. To understand that my friends enjoyed my company as much as I enjoyed theirs. That's it.

Intellectually, I've known this a long time. But the weird thing about intellectual information is that it does not necessarily translate into emotional understanding. It's rather like, when I realized, intellectually, that I simply did not believe in God and could not fathom a way to change that, I was still afraid of hell for a long while. Emotions go so much deeper than simple knowledge. The same applies here.

I've always had good--even great--friends. I have more best friends than anyone deserves to, and they've always been there for me over the years and the continents and the life changes (and me for them). But I always have believed, deep down, that they didn't really want me around, that they were just humoring me. This is probably connected to my life-long fear of rejection.

I don't mean the "Imma hit on you and you might say no" fear of rejection. I mean something I think is far worse. When friends turned their backs on me in my life--it has happened occasionally, but not frequently enough to justify my feelings, I think--I was crushed. I was hurt even more, in some cases, than if a lover dumped me. Lovers I learned to build a defense against--at least, after the first or second ones--but friends? I always get hit with a wild throw from right field.

I feel the urge to throw in a few jokes, but I just don't feel like it today. Please forgive me. I'll be back to entertaining you shallow mouth-breathers soon enough.

I cannot explain why I've spent almost all of my life being afraid of traveling in groups. I know it's connected to this idea that I am not a part of the group and never can be. My main guess is that I was taught to be in the world but not of it, which is powerful when you internalize the idea deeply. I also thought myself uninteresting, rather dull, with boring stories. I'm not looking for sympathy here, y'all. Just listen, ok? I remember trying to tell a story as a kid and my mother interrupted me to say, "You don't know how to tell a story." I remember this vividly because it hurt so badly. I didn't know until then that I was boring--I'd had reasons to believe already that I wasn't funny--but my mother wouldn't mislead me. So I went into adulthood being afraid of failure and of what others would think of me. You can see how that would make me anti-social, I expect.

When I first got to Izmir, I was invited to several group events. I went to one and shrugged off the rest. Why? You tell me and we'll both know. I claimed "introvert," which has a great deal of truth to it, but there was clearly more to it. I honestly felt that I wasn't invited. Not really. Because of my self-image as a boring, uninteresting, unfunny person.

However...I've come to understand--emotionally now--that this isn't true. There are some uneducated/twisted/strange/not-grounded-in-reality people out there who find me both interesting and entertaining and seek my company. For reals.

You sick bastards. I love you.

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