Rainbow Child

Don’t have them, don’t understand the concept. I’ve spent this weekend with his little sister and it was great. We went out drinking, eating, we ended up at a klezmer music concert (great music, btw!) and, all in all, we had a great time together, just as it happened with his twin sister in Paris.

But the more I think about this brother-sister relationship, the more I don’t understand it. I know it’s some sort of parent-child thing, only cooler, but it still puzzles me. I am an only child and I was raised like one: I got to eat the whole bar of chocolate, I got to play with all the toys, I was grounded for every stupid thing I did. I have no idea what it means to share a room with someone, to take someone’s side out of brotherly care etc. I don’t know what it means to worry about someone who is travelling by plane and I have no idea how it feels to spend time with your siblings after months of being apart.

Yes, I have a family and, yes, I care about *almost* all of its members but except for my parents I don’t feel like there is any special bond connecting me to them. I have learned to accept them the way they are but I still judge them from time to time (not out loud, though) and we see each other for Christmas, Easter and a couple of times during the summer holiday. No big love between us, no real bonds.

I don’t regret not having siblings – hell, I’m glad I’m alone, spoiled and egotistic but sometimes I would like to know how it feels to care for someone not because you are great friends or because they are your parents but because you’ve shared so many things together, so many memories, because they were grounded because of you or because they wanted to save you, because you were fighting over the same bar of chocolate.

Siblings – strange creatures

1. Mum has a university colleague who has moved to Germany. They kept in touch and 5 years ago she insisted I go and visit them so I was at her place for 2 weeks.

2. Her boy, who is 16,  is staying with us for 2 weeks just because I like his mum and I feel like I owe them something for those 2 weeks I spent at their place. I don’t like him at all and it was just a favour.

3. When we got back home from BM, the house was a mess. He had been using our pans although Eddie had told him to buy his own pan for frying meat. There were oil stains everywhere, unwashed dishes scattered around the kitchen. More than that, his stuff was everywhere – we barely had any place in the fridge to put our own groceries.

4. The moment he came home I told him about the mess he had made. His answer: “I didn’t think that was a mess. To me it looked clean enough”. Not to mention the countless rude retorts. He thinks he owns the place and he acts like I’m the guest.

5. I started cleaning the kitchen and the moment I was finished with the cooker he wanted to fry meat!!!!! For fuck’s sake, I scrubbed and I cleaned and now you want to fuck up my work? Of course, he is a sportsman and he needs to eat heavy stuff… Now all the apartment smells of his fucking fried meat and I don’t even want to see how the cooker looks…

6. Every time I tell him about something bad that he has done, he replies that “I’m only 16″ or “I had no idea about that” or “I’m a boy, I don’t have to know how to cook”. Well, fuck you, I won’t give you private cooking lessons! Speaking of which, his mum told me today that I should teach him how to clean! EXCUSE ME??? Are you bloody insane???? You’re letting your kid move on his own to Bucharest, finishing his high school here and you want me to teach him everyfuckingthing that you haven’t taught him yet??? I’m sorry, I’m no babysitter.

7. This is it! Except friends and family and the occasional couch surfers, I won’t have anyone else stay at my place. Yes, I have a spare room, but I don’t want to be anyone’s maid. Really, it’s absolutely outrageous the way this kid talks to me! And for these two hell of a weeks he is not paying rent and he didn’t bring us anything, not even a bar of chocolate. It’s like “hey, suckers, I’m pissing all over you and you can’t do anything about that”. I would LOVE to just throw his stuff out of the balcony and change the lock. But I can’t, so IN MY OWN HOUSE I will have to put up with his crap until Friday.

Someone really hates me up there…

We moved in together. It officially happened when I came back to Bucharest but he still hasn’t brought over his furniture cause he doesn’t have where to put it yet. We’re working on that. Unofficially, we’ve been living together since day one. I was still pissed because my relatives were killing me with their stupid questions about me being single when he moved in. It wasn’t subtle at all: I almost kicked him in the groin when I saw his toothbrush in my bathroom. He was allowed to sleep over but he wasn’t allowed to leave things behind. At least for the first two weeks he wasn’t. Then he simply moved in.

I thought Mum would have something to say about this but it seems that she has stronger opinions when it comes to tattoos than me living with a guy I’ve just started dating After visiting my parents twice they are now convinced that he’s more than a nice guy (although Mum thinks he’s a bit… work-shy) and that I’m on good hands. Or at least that’s the part of the story they should know.

Truth is that he is a nice guy. He’s even more nice than I deserve (it’s always been like that!) but he has his share of flaws. It’s always ugly and messy when we fight but then which fights aren’t like that? I usually shout and feel like throwing things at him and he is trying to calm me down and then he comes up with all these silly excuses for being so stupid. Of course I’m never wrong!

And officially we’ve been together for half a year now. Oh, I know it’s not much at all but it’s still something for me. Living together for six months with someone is really something. Of course we spent the “anniversary” apart because we were having one of our fights! He went out for some beers with his friend, I went out for a lemonade with one of my friends. We’re such a modern couple

Why are we still together? I don’t know. Maybe it’s because he’s such a nice guy. Or maybe because we can stand each other (which is a HUGE achievement for me). Whatever the reason is, I have to admit it’s cool to have someone to share stuff with. And go places with. And boss around. And cook for. And read with. And… and… and…

This moody weather doesn’t inspire me at all. I look at my bike, I long to go and read in the park and as I’m heading towards the door it starts raining cats and dogs. Every bloody day! Then of course the sun shines like nothing has happened but it’s too late: my mood is ruined, the roads are wet, the earth is full of water, there’s nothing to do than to stay in.

And that’s what I’ve been doing since I came back to Bucharest. For almost a week now I’ve been going out only to buy groceries and only once I went to the city centre. I met a high school colleague who was here for an interview. We had a nice chit-chat and caught up on what has been going on in our lives but I have to admit I don’t understand her and others like her. She didn’t say it out loud but you could see how helpless she was here. She was afraid of getting lost, she gave me the money and I bought the metro card for her!!!, you get the picture. And it was the first time she had traveled by herself with the train. Come on! Ugh, I don’t understand people who are that scared of this big world, people who prefer to stay at home where everything is safe and nice.

Anyways, my days are so bloody boring that I’ve started playing old DOS games. I read a bit, I sleep, I cook and that’s about all. In the evening we watch Friends and Seinfeld and then we sleep some more. I can hardly wait to go to Athens to feel like a tourist again and walk everywhere and take hundreds of pictures daily. I have no idea how housewives don’t feel like killing themselves from all this boredom…

All my fears and insecurities come to life during nighttime. In my dreams, the ones close to me always hurt me: they let me wait for them in the rain without ever showing up, they run from me, they don’t want to talk to me, they cheat on me. People with whom I haven’t talked in years and people I don’t give a shit about anymore are always very nice to me: we talk for hours, we visit places, we’re inseparable. And when I dream about my parents I dream about them rejecting me. And uRMa always gets hurt. Always.

I don’t know if I want to find out the cause of these horrible nightmares but I think it would be interesting to read some studies about what’s going on in our mind when we’re sleeping. Until then I’ll be, again, terrified of going to sleep at night.