I may be holding your hand, but I'm holding it loose

I love my brother more and more every day. I'm so grateful to have him as my brother.
The other night, we were out and in a rare moment, he leaned over and poked me in the side. "You know, you're not such a bad travel partner," he said.
In Mike-speak, that means he loves me.

Mike, in his infinite wisdom, told me the other day that I'm going to have to marry a man who I love more than he loves me.
Why? I asked, offended.
Because if not, you'll never settle down, he said.
What about equal love? I wanted to know.
He rolled his eyes.

The inevitable has happened again.
The lead up was not slow, but the tipping point was sudden, irrevocable, immense.

I sat on the patio of a downtown jazz bar, sipping a glass of red wine. I sat across from the group. The man next to me leans over and asks me where I'm from.
We begin talking.
His wife is from Canada. We talk snowboarding. We talk snow. We talk travel.
And then the guy that I've been seeing for nearly a month leans over and interrupts.  "My name is James." He shakes the man's hand.
"Clint," the man replies.
Clint and I hadn't hadn't even introduced ourselves yet. We were just talking. There was no imminent threat.

It happens every time, in every relationship. It's always the point at which I realize I'm through.
It's the point at which the guy I'm dating tries to assert his dominance over me, always in a public setting. It's the point at which I realize I'm no longer my own person in his eyes, that he feels as though he mustn't let me have a moment to myself.
It's the point at which I know it's time to go.

The trajectory of my relationships is thus: meet, hang out, fall into a comfortable pattern, boy falls in love, I go along with it, sometimes in love myself, eventually this fizzles into my growing discomfort. Soon I can't stand anything. I sit, foggy minded, cataloging his faults in my mind: I hate his posture, I hate the way he washes his hair, I hate his facial hair, I hate the way he dances, I hate the pants he's wearing, I hate the way he agrees with me, I hate the way he doesn't know anything.
It's usually the not knowing anything that begins to irk me, the point where my mind and eyes begin to wander.
After my cataloging, I think maybe I just need some time to get used to it. And then the control sets in. The desperate fear that if I'm left alone I'll act on my independence and flee. (Their fears are entirely valid. After the cataloging, there's really not much left to do for them but beg.) Then comes the public hugging, the too-close-hand-holding, the oppression, the maddening oppression.
Then I start to nag, start to answer questions sharply, start to get uneasy.

Ah.
I can't stand it. 

I want someone who makes me want to know more, I want someone who can talk about issues without sounding like an idiot, I want someone who can back up their statements with fact. I want someone who can use big words effortlessly but not pretentiously. I want someone educated, someone driven, someone who's not making excuses for their own lack of accomplishment. I want someone to push me, to make me feel beautiful and worth it, but who also knows their own value.

I have friends who just moved to Portland together who are intellectually compatible on all levels, whose discussions and interests are, well, interesting to each of them and not so intertwined that they've lost their senses of self. They are two distinct personalities, yet they are so well matched, it's insane. I often wonder if I would find that with someone. Find that intensity that can be calm and laid back but also enough to set a life course in motion.

I want someone to respect my mind, but more importantly, I want to respect their mind in return.

Ugh. And so this chapter ends, I think.

*

But I'm glad.
I like that I've been able to pinpoint the problem with men and will hopefully be able to move into the next period of my dating life with grace, maturity, and a sharper eye for intelligence.

I've also been starting to get anxious about what I want to do when I get back home. I think this anxiety is very healthy, hopefully, and I'm going to attempt to control this energy and channel it into wild productivity upon return.
I think that South Africa was the perfect sojourn from "the real world," which I've not yet publicly admitted yet but was exactly my purpose in coming here. I was putting off real life until I had accepted that real life was coming whether I liked it or not.

I love it here but there's that lingering sense of stagnancy about the whole thing. I want to resume the life course that will eventually lead to nothing more than mortgages, death and taxes, hopefully with some lovely vacations in between.
Oh but I miss my car. I can't explain to you how much I love driving, and especially how much I love driving Simon. Mom knows this - she offered to let me drive home (not Simon, sadly) from DIA on December 1st. I've been begging since October 2006 when I first came home from Loyola.

But I'm ready. I'm not ready to leave this place, of course, but I'm ready to attack real life like a rabid animal (that was a horrible simile, forgive me). I'm ready to begin.



*

Language is a funny thing.  I speak English. I am ashamed that I only speak one language. I have six years of Spanish under my belt. I still can't converse properly, although if it was life or death, I'd do alright. I read it and write it better than I speak it, and my comprehension is moderate.

Here in Cape Town, the primary languages are English and Afrikaans. Afrikaans is derived from Dutch, mostly, but has Germanic elements as well. Margreet, my Dutch roommate, speaks with Mama P in Afrikaans. I usually can use context clues and tonal cues as well as hand movements to figure out what they're talking about.
Margreet also speaks French.

I have decided that whenever anyone is speaking a non-native language, they think in their first secondary language. For example, whenever I'm learning anything in Afrikaans, I use Spanish to say "and." Because somehow my brian is trying to put Afrikaans into the Spanish folder in my head.
This is proven (however non-scientifically) by Magreet's lapses into French when trying to speak in English or German.

Last night, she was saying something in some language and I looked at her and answered in English. She looked at me, surprised, and I shrugged. "Latin," I told her. I love Mr. Hilbert for making us do etymologies for weeks - as a result, I have a nice idea of where words originate, especially if they are Latin or Greek in origin. "And Spanish," I added.
Words are so similar in different languages, really. What Margreet said last night in French translated to "easy" in Spanish, hence my basic comprehension. Here, I've found that I can usually figure out what people are talking about based on words that I can hear in their sentences. All you have to know is the root, or some synonyms, and you've got it. Comprehension isn't complete but it's present.


*

The weekend trip is nearly managed - we're headed off to Jeffry's bay early Saturday morning. We'll spend three nights there and then go back to either Plettenberg Bay or Knysna for two more nights before returning home.

It should be nice to get away.