Uwaki Gomen Cat
This is uwaki gomen neko, or "I'm sorry I cheated on you cat." The statue itself is simply a beautiful example of a traditional Japanese craft, but it was given to me shortly after an... uh.. incident, or said in a much classier way, "an entanglement." That lasted months. And involved an elaborate set of lies. The cat itself cost about 3,000 yen, or roughly $300. I did not ask for this cat, but here it is, on my bookshelf, reminding me to be both wary and humble.
When I was 21 I was dating a guy who was one of those rare people that I find myself incredibly attracted to. I was totally infatuated with him and could not think straight when I was around him, and I was terribly unsure of myself. Although there was a huge degree of physical attraction, I often felt drained and bad about myself after seeing him. I knew that the relationship was not going to last but I just did not have the self control at the time to give it a graceful ending. About 2 years into our relationship I got an opportunity to study abroad in Japan. I took it, because I never pass up a chance to travel if I can help it. I went to study in what was a Minnesota State University campus in Akita, Japan. At first we wrote each other letters and emails and everything seemed to be going well, although without his physical presence i started to see his manipulative side more clearly. Then I met a Japanese guy who was wildly unconventional, and interesting, who I felt totally at ease with. We quickly became friends and I found myself more and more drawn to him. It put me in a huge amount of self-conflict as we spent more and more time together, and finally one night I was locked out of my dorm room, he invited me to stay in his room until my roommate came back, we started drinking, and things happened. It was really a little bit more than a make-out session we did not even have sex, but I woke up in his room with the sickening feeling like I had broken something I could never put back together. I wrote to my boyfriend that day and told him. He was hurt and angry of course, and I just felt sick over it. He wanted to break up, then he wanted to get back together, and that went on for a couple of weeks. All the while T (the Japanese guy I had met) was crazy with frustration because I refused to see him while I tried to patch things up with the boyfriend. It was just an awful, sickening, series of weeks that ended with the boyfriend faking another relationship to see how I would react and being furious with me when I finally let him go. I don't remember how long it took for T and I to finally get together and agree to be a serious couple, I don't think it was long. Our school had less than 200 students, so it was hard to avoid each other. I remember being happy, but there was this persistent sad, sick feeling that tinged the whole thing. It was as if the relationship was born from betrayal, and it had been poisoned. I did not realize it at the time but this colored all of my feelings for him and made it difficult for me to completely be present with him. It damaged my respect for myself, and my respect for him. And for some reason, I even felt trapped with him, as if I had made a decision that I had no choice to accept and play out. On the other hand, we really were fantastic travel partners, and I will never regret any of the time we spent traveling Japan on the slow train, sleeping in parks and hostels, hitch hiking, and generally being a dynamic international couple. It is just that there was a persistent brokenness to the whole thing that I never could shake.
After a year I had to return to Minnesota. T was supposed to follow and study at MSU. Not long after I left his phone calls started getting less frequent, he was hard to get a hold of, and I got a generally weird, distant feeling. I think I knew what was going on, but had no evidence and no way to validate it. Then the communication shut off completely for a couple of weeks. I felt like I had a limb ripped off, and was constantly searching for it. I think of it now as the "ghost limb" phase, when a relationship is ended in what feels like a premature and traumatic way, and I was left with a feeling like the situation was unnatural. I remember losing control of my feelings, and thinking I was just going crazy. Finally, I had lunch with a friend of mine who had just come back from studying at the same school. He was showing me his photographs, and I saw one of T performing in a traditional dance troop that I had been in. I found it interesting that he had joined, since he wasn't all that interested before. Behind him was a girl who he had always spoken fondly of, and had even done a fair bit of comparing me to. He would ask "why can't you dress more like her?" and say "poor Y - she is helpless with men. She just can't control herself." She had joined as well, although she never expressed any interest in it before. Well, T and Y were standing next to each other, not touching, not even looking at each other, but you could see the energy between them. And you could also see the same sickening conflict on his face that I had experienced. I knew right away what had happened and questioned my friend, who was too afraid to tell me, but did let it nonverbally "slip" that I was correct. I had to get a hold of T through friends, and let him know that I knew. It turned out they had moved into an apartment together, had gotten jobs in town, and I have no idea what the plan was but his way of dealing with it was to pretend I did not exist. I remember Megumi, a good friend of mine and also a friend of the other girl's, reaming her a new one in Japanese over the phone. Y cried, she said sorry, she wanted me to forgive her, while they were still living together. T was really just kind of a dick about the whole thing, looking back on it. His attitude was "well, I love both of you and that is the way I feel." I was not in the mood for forgiveness but he eventually did get his shit together and move to Minnesota. I have no idea why I went back with him when he arrived. I think I felt like somehow I had deserved this, or that I had no right to judge, since I had inflicted pain on another person in a similar way. We got back together but the relationship was too damaged to ever come back. I hated myself for not being enough. I hated myself for being with him. I hated not being with him. This went on for about a year. I would go to Mankato to visit him at his school, and we would have a great time, but half the time I would show up and he would be hours late in meeting me with a dumb excuse. A friend suggested that he was just not that into me, and I didn't know why I had not thought of that before. I eventually moved to Arizona for an Americorps position. He visited me a couple of times, but we eventually fizzled out.
I don't know why I gave him a second chance, or why I hung on so long. All I know is that I was able to see cheating from several sides, and no matter what way I look at it, it is just a soul sucking mess, and not worth the trouble. If I had it to do over again I would have made a decision and told the boyfriend right away before anything happened. It still would have been awful but it would not have dragged on. I would have also broken with T immediately when I found out what he was doing, and left him far, far behind. But I don't have it to do over again, and if there is one thing good that came out of it, it is that I am more sympathetic toward people going though these situations. For what that is worth. And I have a $300 cat who sits on my shelf and reminds me of how easy it is to make mistakes, and how hard it is to come back from them.
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