Our Little World

'Good things come to those who wait', isn't that what they always say? You never hear people say that good things happen to people with bad timing, to people who wait too long, who wait for the wrong things, who wait at the wrong place. I guess my story with Alan is a bit like that. We became good friends at work. After a while, we could read each other's minds, discussed each other's flings and romantic failures. We truly hated each other's flings. He kept saying 'my' guys were all mean bastards who were using me. I kept telling him 'his' girls were all crazy bitches who were stringing him along. Of course we did not know each other's almost-girlfriends or boyfriends, but we just knew what they were like. Specially, we knew that the worse they were portrayed, the better we looked. Looking back, it seems incredible we never noticed why we were doing this.
 
Alan and I created our own world. A world in which even our jobs in accounting were funny and our accountant colleagues were potential comedians, clowns, entertainers, autists, nut-bags. We even managed to suspect an actually very innocent accounting-colleague of secretly working as a porn-actor. It was the only possible explanation why this colleague would talk and move the way he did. We also imagined the whole hidden personality and life of a guy who never ever spoke a single word to anyone. We imagined he was a hobbit from a different world who used his ring, which had a black stone on it, to shift between the realms of accounting and hobbit world. Of course, the vast majority of our colleagues would be just 'nerds' in our eyes, even though Alan and I were actually getting scarily good at Excel and were technically not allowed to call anyone else a nerd - for the rest of our lives. Our favourite and most entertaining subject, though, was laughing about ourselves and about each other. There was no weakness we could not dissect, laugh about and grow stronger and more self-secure from.

I do not really remember when it was that I started feeling attracted to him. To be totally honest, there was a time when I was very much overwhelmed by all these guys walking around in the new company I had just joined. Previously, I had worked in offices full of elderly gentlemen, bald midgets with a moustache, or just women. When I started working at this high-performance-delivering consulting uber-company, I could not believe my eyes when I saw young consultants everywhere, wearing fashionable suits and elaborate hair-styles with a lot of gel. There were no receding hairlines, no dandruff, almost no gray hair or gray faces, just youth, self-confidence, testosterone, all over the place. Understandably, during the first months, Alan passed unnoticed. I had actually promised myself that I would not engage in any romantic matters with co-workers. I failed miserably. Within four months, I had already dated three guys. Obviously, after those three, I would really not start anything new, and that's when I starting spending more time with Alan, a surely-to-be-platonic colleague I could have a laugh with. After a while, I started dating guy number four, and moved in with him.

My relationship with guy number four was a disaster. At the same time, I was assigned to the most horrendous project on the planet. Life was tough back then. My boyfriend did not understand me. I did not understand him. We did not talk, we did not laugh. I do not really know anymore why I stayed with him for so many months which now seem endless. Everything seems so blurry when looking back now, like a dream, a nightmare I have tried to forget as soon as possible after waking up, but I remember being determined to 'make it work'. I did not see Alan very often back then, it did not seem ethical towards my boyfriend, though I needed a friend very badly back then. I did not understand why things felt so miserable. I was working on the most challenging project we had, and I was hanging in there - that made me 'successful'. I was dating one of our top executives, who was also a very nice guy and wishing to have children very soon - that made me a successful woman. In theory, life was perfect. However, it felt exactly the opposite. It was hell. It was a sort of hell I had never seen before, a hell I had created myself for myself for what felt the rest of my life. No escape in sight. Slowly, everyday, I was losing a small piece of myself; bit by bit, every single day a little bit. At some stage, I was not able to sleep anymore. I could not cry or run away either. I felt no milligram of energy left inside of me. All my energy had been consumed by trying to maintain this unmaintainable situation for too many months. At some stage, driven more by despair than by strength, I left my boyfriend. A couple of days later, I had a burnout at work. Suddenly, I was sitting at home, sick, with a horrible headache, no energy, no boyfriend who would call to check on me, no food in my fridge, unable to sleep. I had lost what I had most wanted in life and spent so much time trying to build and increase: success.

I spent many weeks on my own, recovering every day a little bit, both physically and mentally. I learnt that you should never ignore your body's and heart's signals. I learnt that being successful is definitively no success if you feel like the unhappiest and most punished person on the planet. I learnt that life is too short and precious to force yourself to a life sentence of commitments and tasks you really really do not have the will or energy to do. I learnt that losers can be winners and winners can be losers. I learnt that security is an illusion and fear an unnecessary and cumbersome obstacle. After doing some thorough thinking and feeling, I decided to do something for myself, indulge myself and challenge myself at the same time. I knew what I would do. I would quit my job and go on a one-year trip around the world. After that year, I would probably stay in Argentina, with my family, and not return to Europe for a while.

A couple of weeks later, I returned to the office. I was able to start working on a new project. Over time, things became very relaxed. Alan and I started talking again, emailing and having drinks after work. I noticed there was something in the way we looked at each other and talked to each other that made me suspect there was more between us than we wanted to admit. It was the way we laughed together what gave it away. It was the way we shared a common little world that made us both feel ecstatic about little things, big things, work, colleagues, life. I loved that little world we both escaped to when we were together. It was so inviting that it made us want to spend more and more time together, almost never seeming to be able to get enough of each other.

The more we enjoyed our time together, the more we became aware of the upcoming good-bye. In only four weeks, I would be leaving Amsterdam, probably for good. It was during those last days that I often asked myself the reason why we were falling for each other. Was it because of us, really us, did we really have a true bond and a future? Or was the feeling due to the impossibility of our cause given the circumstances? Or was it me, a serial monogamist, acting again as one, trying to seduce guy number five? Were we actually falling for each other at all, or was it all maybe still an innocent friendship?

I decided to go on the trip leaving guy number five un-seduced. If our love was real, I thought, it would only benefit from this new experience I was about to make, becoming more mature and turning into this 'true big love'. Sure, this was not very realistic. I would certainly miss our little world very much, but, in a way, our little world was now part of my world, so I would be able to carry it with me to every corner of the earth, no matter how remote. Alan would always travel with me, in my heart, in the memory of our laughs and talks. Even if we had never kissed or even touched, he had gotten under my skin - and that's where he would stay at all times and in all adventures to come.