Citric Summer Problems (The Emerald City Stories #2)
One year and some months have passed since the first story. I have just moved houses and now I am living in the heart of the city centre of Dublin. After sharing a house with nine people, I got an upgrade and shared an apartment with four guys. The building is on one of the busiest streets in Dublin, with a Luas station and a shopping centre by the corner, Jervis Street. On the north corner, I see the Liffey River and, on the other side, I have Pantibar anytime. (From 4 PM, I mean.) This is the dream for the exchange students: A central location just five minutes away from your language school and from work.
However, by the title of this story, you can imagine it was not all a bed of roses. On the good side, it was not the apartment the problem, of course. My life got much better living in town, near my school, my work and access to a lot of entertainment. But do you know when people say that it doesn't matter how far you move if you don't sort out your issues, they will keep following you? In my case, I had two of them: My previous flatmates refusing any option to occupy my room and recover my deposit. (Yes, a quick explanation: It's really common in Dublin for you to have to pay the deposit of the house — usually, one month of rent — for the previous tenant who was before you. When it is your time to move, you have to find someone to pay your deposit. That's the only way you guarantee your money back in many cases.)
Let's rewind a few weeks and months back: I lived with two women (Ana and Bia) and a gay friend (Paulo) who made an agreement with me that we would try to replace ourselves with gay people or women when it came our time to leave the house.
Then, one day Ana was with some worry about her child back in her country and possibly leaving soon enough. From an innocent conversation among the three of us, Ana simply says:
I am not going to go with the agreement we had if I don't find anyone in time enough. I will replace myself with anyone who's willing to stay.
Well, my thought was: Alright, there's no agreement so. Everyone agreed to disagree with that.
One month passed and after some situation in a house with ten people, I decided to leave. We have just heard from our sub-landlord (Yeah, I know. The situation gets better and better…) that everyone might lose the house as we were having too many parties in the evening, in the middle of the week and we forgot how the walls are thin in Dublin.
Of course, there were accusations everywhere, fingers pointed and so on. Mainly because our sub-landlord said that everyone should leave the house as there was going to be an inspection from the letting agency, and we were not supposed to be ten tenants but, at maximum, five. (Told you.)
There was the initial debate: Who's going out and who's staying in? When this started, I just observed. Saw people, who were supposedly friends, attacking each other, proving that they needed more than the others, arguing that they were more worthy than the others. It was a waste of time seeing that bunch of adults wasting everyone's time with that. So, I suggested: Why not do a name on the hat?
The stadium went crazy. I was selfish and heartless and even my sexuality was attacked in the middle of this by one of the people that I considered really close to me. Well, "for the mouth speaks what the heart is full of”. I attacked back, obviously, and retracted myself from it.
The discussion kept going on. I participated sometimes (Quite actively) and in other minutes I just saw this bunch of adults fighting against each other. It was a proper psychological hunger game. There were a lot of fights about month-long unresolved issues and personal issues that night. In the end, guess whom the idea was chosen to sort out the issues?
We decided to do a name on the hat as it would be fairest to see which five were going to stay in the house for the next three days. In the end, our sub-landlord allowed all of us to spend the nights in as the inspection was going to happen in the afternoon. By then, many limits and boundaries were broken between all of us. That's why I decided to leave.
As I said at the beginning: To recover my money, I needed to replace myself with another person. Our house was around 20 minutes from the city centre by bus. We were 10. One bathroom and one toilette. Four people in a room. I was taking viewings after viewings. Interviews after interviews. I was already moved to the new apartment and still, I had to return several times to the house to sort the vacancy thing out.
Then, a light at the end of the tunnel: A friend of one of the housemates wanted to move in. He knew everyone and liked everyone. He was ready to do it and I was ready to pass the keys. Until Ana and Bia decided to remember that agreement that we agreed to disagree as Ana stated when she needed to possibly move out: The person needed to be gay or a woman. But remember that:
"I am not going to go with the agreement we had if I don’t find anyone in time enough. I will replace myself with anyone who’s willing to stay." — Ana
I was three weeks looking for someone. When I found it, it couldn't be him, with threats that they would ask him to leave. (In all my ingenuity, I believed and went back on my word with the guy.) One week for the rent to come up and to pay the sum for the house. I was on my limit, giving up on the proportion of the rent, some pre-paid bills and so on. I just wanted to leave the house, completely.
So, for the first time, I decided to use something that I am against. Threats. After another big disrespectful discussion with Ana and Bia, I simply said:
Now you have two options: You find someone who's for your likes, or you deal with the rest of the rent because I am already giving up on my deposit. Then, you can have this discussion with the sub-landlord.
It's incredible how when it's about the pocket, everyone moves mountains. In a matter of one day, they found a girl. I finally dropped the keys and slept easily after weeks in the new apartment.
Not only did the keys drop. My weight, out of a sudden, was 76kg. My weight when I left Brazil was around 105kg. I could only notice it when buying clothes with a friend at Penney's, getting the usual XL shirts, until I tried and they looked like a sack of potatoes. Then I tried the L, same. The M was still in a good room. So, S felt perfect.
For a person who was always overweight and always wearing the same size of clothes for 21 years, having this kind of change was, at minimum, shocking. From XL to S in one year and some months. No crazy diets. No regular goings to the gym. Just living. And been anxious for months now. I have never been that slim and weak before. Thankfully, after months of caring about other things in my first year, I had started to appreciate my body in the way it was, chubby. Then, I had to switch to this new version it was reflected to me.
I got sick after this as my internal system was collapsing too. Not sleeping well, losing a good deal of weight, getting super stressed for months and months, drinking heavily to compensate for the stress… (And I was living around the city centre, what could we expect.) Someone had to pay the bill. My insurance, exactly. At the same time, after healing I felt it was a cleansing from that first year and months and the recent situation.
After recovering, putting my mind out of the situations at the beginning and mid-summer and understanding what was happening with my body and system, I met… Someone(s).
(This is already quite long, so I'll leave it to story #3.)
The names in this story are fictitious to preserve the identity of the people involved. Any coincidence is a coincidence.
