desaparecida

this weekend i had the strange sensation of having disappeared for a few hours. i don't know why i get this feeling about ferris b. but i feel like i am absolutely meaningless to him. not that i am searching to mean something to him. which brings on the feeling of having disappeared... it's like the same idea as the age-old question of if a tree falls in a forest and nobody is around to hear it, does it make any sound? if i spend a few hours with someone who is with me merely because i am the only person with ovaries that he knows in chicago, do i cease to exist for those few hours (because to him i essentially do not exist)? it felt so absurd the other day when i told my mom that my "friend" was here for the weekend. what friend? they never met him; does that mean that he doesn't exist? no wait, he does, because a few of my friends met him. so he is not an imaginary friend but an actual person. i believe i am very afraid of him. not in the conventional sense; at no time this weekend did i ever feel i was in danger of being bruised or dismembered in any way. but afraid that i'm not good enough for him, afraid that he thinks i have no class, afraid of all these things that shake my own ideas of myself to the core. what was all this before about being confident and believing in myself? he kind of makes me feel like poor-ass trailer trash who is doing nothing with her life - and it didn't help that he put down a hundred-dollar bill on the table at Cafe Iberico. what bothers me the most is that i forgot myself again. i became submissive quiet girl, or obfuscated-by-the-appearance-of-wealth girl, but mostly, afraid-to-be-herself girl. and i don't feel that this situation has any solution. why should it? he is doing his MBA at Michigan, is a snob, i think he is mean-spirited, cold, and one of the reasons i am so bewildered by the question of how people can actually come to love each other in argentina (i think he is one of those who believes that the man must have absolute control and looks down upon a woman calling a man out-of-turn). bewildered is the word of the day; i am too bewildered at this moment to do anything. he allowed me to disappear - how else could i feel?

fortunately i am back among the real people. people around whom i feel i can be myself. people around whom i believe myself to be very interesting, intelligent, and classy. it would be betraying myself to entertain the thought that maybe all those things are relevant? because that would be to submit to the idea that he is superior to me - if i didn't feel at all interesting, intelligent, or classy when i was around him, and i also believed that being interesting, intelligent, and classy were relevant to who you are with, then that would be admitting that he is more interesting, intelligent, and classy than myself, which is bad because i believe myself to be all three of these. i don't know, i think i am complicating the way i feel and adding more and more mass to this black hole into which i disappeared for a few hours the other day. i am now with my feet on the event horizon but my shoulders leaning towards the hole - someone please pull me out.

anyhow an interesting coincidence. my affinity for certain men has become even more acute - i have an affinity for left-handed argentine men. my ex is one; ferris b. is one; JPB, whom i met last thursday and interestingly enough get along with, is also one. weird, weird, WEIRD!