The Last Sandwich It's always hardest to write about what is most dear to you. Or what is most close. It's very easy to write about lofty ideals, or grandeur, but when we need to approach the very things that are closest to our hearts, closest to being human, we stop. We freeze. Emotions are painful things, torturous. To feel the euphorias of love: being happy, being wanted , being appreciated, sharing pleasurable time together with someone, and falling in love with someone... Only to watch it disintegrate piece by piece, slowly, until you don't know who they are anymore - It's cruelty, it's torture. You would never fall so far if you were never so happy in the first place. Human behavior is cruel and surprisingly, inhumane. You would think the people who once loved you would be the most able ones to talk to you, but they are usually the ones who avoid you or stop talking to you all together. I'm too exhausted to write about who, why, or what happened. As if you need to know - No. People follow the same patterns. They try to be unique, but they act and react in surprisingly similar ways. I don't feel the need to name names or horrify you with what they did. You're probably sitting there thinking, "Try me", either because you've been through hell and back and nothing scares you anymore, or otherwise you'd like to hear how bad things can get, and think "Gosh, I'm glad I'm with (X), and not out there in the big, bad world". Either way, I politely refuse, for now, to go into detail about my exes, ex lovers or what not. Maybe someday, some year, or another #life. Maybe in another context, I could tell some funny stories, but right now, they are still fresh scars in my memory. I'm not exactly ready to say "Hey, this big-as scar on my head, actually looks like Elvis. Or Jesus". I'm not at that point yet. Try another twenty or forty years, when I've healed, or when I've become a grandma. Maybe then I can laugh and tell stories about inappropriately misdirected jizz. Or people dancing with their penis. I'm too exhausted to talk about 'real' love or enter a peppy, positive discussion on it, but I'm more than happy to talk about the concept of love. There's not much to do when real love or a real good relationship eludes you. So nowadays I spend time breaking down the concept, or crocheting, or accidentally having sex with friends on the illusion they love me. I'm terribly myopic at spotting real love. I really only see it for what it is when they are actually that close. And sometimes, not even then. My eyes can be completely open while my brain is asleep. I think that's what has happened in my failed, friend-to-romance fiascos. Love- is this illusion I've always had. A fantasy. I knew what it should feel like: this tingling in my body, this airiness, this lightness, and the way I melt into the atmosphere. Something this sensational must be real right? It must mean something. So I thought if I loved somebody that much, they would love me too. At least that's what I still thought in high school. Well, it was not exactly an accurate hypothesis, but I eventually did find people who loved me. I loved them first though, so, so much, before they agreed to love me back. That's some hard bargaining! Then I advanced into the idea that, if someone loves me, they will love me forever and treat me nicely. Ha-ha. Ha. It's actually funny, or ironic or a bit sad, that the people who don't love me have been generally better to me than the people who said they do. So I was wrong again. My final thesis into adulthood: The people who are nice to me really care about me, right? I really don't know what to think anymore. My latest thesis research suggests the people being nice to me just want to sleep with me (perhaps even my female friends, in some flipped-over Freudian way). I'm getting a lot of material as proof. People who are nice to me don't even have to like me that much. It's sad. But the really sad thing is losing hope in humanity, losing hope in your sanity, losing hope in normality. Normal people are never really normal, and so-called crazy people are always talking some sense, and usually the only ones unabashedly speaking the truth. We live in a society where falseness and vacuity is applauded. Look at Nicki Minaj. I'm not surprised anymore at a society which relates sex as something people just do, instead of something sacred anymore. I'm just ashamed to be surrounded by a society of walking corpses, with no values in what they want to do, where money is just an exercise on spending. I think I mentally threw up when I had been sleeping with a quiet, softly-spoken guy who later announced he had slept with seventeen people, "maybe more", and that "a few" were prostitutes. Maybe I'm very staunch in the resolution that, no matter how horny or sex-deprived I feel, I would never launch myself into having sex with someone who is meaningless to me. Even my body only wants people I care for, even my body has some kind of spiritual conscience. I think I'm hurt by how low people go. Is sex a sandwich? Am I just a sandwich to you? In efforts not to look like some sandwich-eater (with no particular preference to what kind of sandwich), people go to great lengths to try to treat you like you're a cake on a pedestal. But anyway, they just want to eat you, whether you're spending time together having a picnic, or going out to dinner. They treat you like you're human, but you might as well be a sandwich. And people will happily eat sandwiches for weeks on end. I actually do have a friend who likes (real) sandwiches with only one piece of cheese inside. And I do have a "friend" who likes "sandwiches", but whatever flavor I was, it lasted only a few weeks. According to his FB pics, he might eat even old sandwiches. Another friend, I gave him a sandwich out of love, and he made me add a lot more fillings than I was ready to give. (What is this, a Subway?). Then he got vege only, because I was pissed off at him using me for sandwiches and toppings. Then finally three months later when I lovingly made him a new and improved sandwich again, he decided it was enough. He actually said the sandwich was perfect and he didn't want to ruin it by having another sandwich (from me) again. He said he didn't want to ruin the memory of the last sandwich. That was the first time I was in a sandwich position, and it was the first time I coined the term sandwich for the victim of a person who is just in it for meaningless sex. "Am I just a sandwich to you?" I exclaimed angrily in an email. No more real #life angry clashes in this increasingly digitized world. Well, this had been a friend I trusted, who cajoled me into sex by going out with me, kissing, and faking romance. That wasn't the last time a sandwich-eater tried to eat me. I'm starting to believe a lot of people are sandwich eaters, but they are such bad charmers, it's just easy to fail and I don't notice. Sandwich-eaters are sociopaths, and I have to say, sandwiches are weak prey. They just stand there looking pretty, and it's a fact that someone's gonna come and eat you. It just depends on who. Anytime you show any remote kindness to a guy, that's a signal for them to go get a sandwich. Some guys are timid, and might know there's a possibility for a sandwich but too shy to ask or try. But others are devising ways to get to your sandwich the moment you mention how nice they are. It's like trying to hide food from a obese guy on a diet. You can't just put it up in a cupboard and say "uh-uh, don't touch that. It's forbidden". You gotta be using the highest security locks, reinforced steel doors and the like. Hiding my sandwich in the cupboard or fridge was about all I ever did. And no matter if I said I only made sandwiches for my boyfriend, these sandwich eaters would try to inspect my fridges and cupboards anyway. When asked whether they would like to be my bf ("I can make you sandwiches all the time, wouldn't you like that?"), they would squirm and reply in some wormish way, "I like you, but I don't want a relationship". It seems like they like sandwiches but not the sandwich maker. They've made many cases to prove the point they like being with me and spending time with me, but it's always felt like they'll make me make a sandwich without appreciating why I would do that for them. And maybe worst than not appreciating, they find it discomforting when their sandwich is in love with them.