Last night I did something I haven't done in god knows how long : I took myself out to dinner. There used to be a time in my life when I did things like these all the time, have dinner on my own, or go to the movies alone, and even travelling alone. I got so used to doing things on my own that it just sort of became second nature. But then, somewhere along the way, I stopped doing these things. I don't rightly know what caused it to happen, maybe it was a gradual process, but I do know that in the last seven or eight years I all but stopped doing these things. And yesterday I wasn't feeling well at all - I'm still reeling from a nasty bout of the flu or some shit like that - but having spent the last couple of days feeling like I was run over by a truck, and in turns either sweating profusely or feeling intense cold, I felt like I needed to not be home, and go out. So I showered, got dressed, and after a while I decided I'd go and have a meal by myself. I was walking by an area with a bunch of restaurants, and there's one there where I've been to a bunch of times with friends in the past, so I thought that would be a good option. It was packed to the gills, though, with a number of people waiting to go in whenever there was a free table. But me being on my own meant that I could sit on a high stool by the bar, where they also serve food, and where I once had a meal with my friend Sérgio.
So I went and sat down, and pretty soon there was a waitress handing me the menu. I already knew what I was going to be having, ordered it, and a beer to help wash it down. I'm sitting, listening to music, trying not to pay any attention to my surroundings, when all of a sudden I feel an overwhelming sense of shame for being there completely alone, while everyone else was there with their friends or their dates or their loved ones. I felt like such a loser, a part of me thought that I was being eyed by everyone else there, wondering what that freak at the bar was up to, the gall of him, look at him, such a disgusting thing, sitting there all alone, unwanted, unloved. I felt like my back had a bullseye painted on it and everyone was aiming knives tinged with shame at me. My head sank low, and I sat looking at the phone screen until my food arrived. While I waited, I fell into a a spiral of self-loathing, cursing myself for putting myself in this position, wanting to leave the restaurant with my tail tucked between my legs, cursing myself as a coward for staying. And I know I'm not someone whose sense of self-worth hasn't really ever been that high, but I also know that one of the legacies of my relationship with Silvia - and this because of how everything turned out, and because of the things I did to her, and my behaviour - is a diminishing sense of that self-worth, almost to a point of it being non-existent. In a very real way, I lost the ability to like myself, which helps account to how much I was willing to destroy myself for so, so long. In all honesty, there was ever only one moment in these past many years where I liked who I was, and actively wished to be better - and that was when I existed under the grace of Sofia's love. I finished my meal, left the restaurant, and then went for a long walk, my mind still lost in thought. I was trying to think if I could find the moment in my life where I'd stopped doing these sorts of things, but couldn't manage to. And then, completely unbidden, I recalled a conversation I had with She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, the crazy songstress from, jeez, a decade back now, where she asked me what pland I had for christmas and new years' eve, and I said nothing, I don't celebrate those days, not anymore, and neither did I celebrate my birthday. And she was royally pissed off at me, she told me she didn't find it acceptable that someone she cared for so much didn't celebrate those 'special' days. She said that she was going to make sure that I, as her 'boyfriend', would always have cause to celebrate those days.
And of course, of course, it was a lie, all a lie. I wasn't her boyfriend, and I barely qualified as a 'boyfriend', I was just a side hustle she could easily maneuver into getting what she needed from me, but I place the blame on my goddamned naivete, I have this childish ability to believe in everything people tell me. Maybe it's that guileless side of me when it comes to people that also allows me to believe in all the lies I told myself. I convinced myself I don't deserve to be happy many years ago, and I still haven't managed to convince myself otherwise.
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